Genevieve — Fisk — Baghdad is a city that reeks with the stench of the dead
Topic(s): Iraq | Comments Off on Genevieve — Fisk — Baghdad is a city that reeks with the stench of the deadIndependent (London) July 28, 2004, Wednesday
Baghdad is a city that reeks with the stench of the dead
By Robert Fisk
The smell of the dead pours into the street through the air-conditioning ducts. Hot, sweet, overwhelming. Inside the Baghdad morgue, there are so many corpses that the fridges are overflowing. The dead are on the floor. Dozens of them. Outside, in the 46C (114F) heat, Qadum Ganawi tells me how his brother Hassan was murdered.
“He was bringing supper home for our family in Palestine Street but he never reached our home. Then we got a phone call saying we could have him back if we paid $ 50,000 pounds 27,500 . We didn’t have $ 50,000. So we sold part of our home and many of our things and we borrowed $ 15,000 and we paid over the money to a man in a car who was wearing a keffiyeh scarf round his head.
“Then we got another phone call, telling us that Hassan was at the Saidiyeh police station. He was. He was blindfolded and gagged and he had two bullets in his head. They had taken our money and then they had killed him.”
There is a wail of grief from the yard behind us where 50 people are waiting in the shade of the Baghdad mortuary wall. There are wooden coffins in the street, stacked against the wall, lying on the pavement.
Old men – fathers and uncles – are padding them with grease-proof paper. When the bodies are released, they will be taken to the mosque in coffins and then buried in shrouds. There are a few women. Most stare at the intruding foreigner with something approaching venom. The statistics of violent death in Baghdad are now beyond shame. Almost a year ago, there were sometimes 400 violent deaths a month. This in itself was a fearful number to follow
the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. But in the first 10 days of this July alone,
the corpses of 215 men and women were brought to the Baghdad mortuary, almost all of them dead from gunshot wounds.
In the second 10 days of this month, the bodies of a further 291 arrived. A total of 506 violent deaths in under three weeks in Baghdad alone. Even the Iraqi officials here shake their heads in disbelief. “New Iraq” under its new American- appointed Prime Minister is more violent than ever.
Qadum Ganawi puts his hand on my arm. “Listen,” he says. “My brother had two tiny children. One is only a year old. We have sold our house and borrowed $ 15,000. How can we ever pay this back? And we have nothing for it but the grief of losing my dear brother.
“He was a car importer so they thought he was rich. He wasn’t. And, you know, his wife is Syrian. She went to Syria for a holiday with the two babies. She is there now. She doesn’t know what has happened to her husband.”
Trucks are arriving in the street beside us, a pick-up and a small lorry with
corpses for autopsy. Tony Blair says it is safer here. He is wrong. Every month is a
massacre in Baghdad. Thieves, rapists, looters, American troops at checkpoints and
on convoys, revenge killers, insurgents, they are shooting down the people of this
city faster than ever.
One man was shot dead by a US soldier as he overtook their convoy on the way to his
Baghdad wedding. We found out only because his marriage was to have been celebrated
in a hotel occupied by journalists. Another death I discovered only when an old
Iraqi friend called on me last week. He wanted me to help him leave Iraq. Quickly.
Now.
“I work for the Americans at the airport but I think I’m done for if I stay.” Why?
“Because my uncle worked at the airport for the Americans, just like me. My uncle
was Abdullah Mohi. He was driving home the other night but they stopped him a
hundred
metres from his house. Then they took a knife and cut his throat. We found him
drenched in blood at the steering wheel.” Abbas looks at me with dead eyes. “Should
I go to Jordan? Help me.”
At the mortuary, a big, tall man, Amr Daher, walks up to me. “They killed one of our
tribal leaders from the Dulaimi tribe,” he says. “This morning, right in the middle
of Al-Kut Square, just a couple of hours ago.” Selman Hassan Salume was driving with
his two
teenage sons when three gunmen came alongside in a car and shot him dead. Both his
sons were wounded, one seriously.
Hospital records tell only part of the story. In the blazing heat of an Iraqi
summer, some families bury their dead without notifying the authorities. Some remain
unidentified for ever, unclaimed. The Americans bring in corpses. When they do,
there are no autopsies.
The morticians will not say why. But the Ministry of Health has told doctors there
should be no autopsies in these cases because the Americans will already have
performed the operation.
Not long ago, six corpses arrived at the Baghdad mortuary after being brought in by
US forces. Three were unidentified. Three had names but their families could not be
found. All had suffered, according to the American records, “traumatic wounds to the
head”, the normal phrase for gunshot wounds. There were no autopsies. Death is now
so routine even the most tragic of deaths becomes a footnote. A US tank collides
with a bus north of Baghdad. Seven civilians are killed. The Americans agree to open
an investigation. It makes scarcely a paragraph in the local press. Four days ago, a
US M1A1 Abrams tank crossing the motorway at Abu Ghraib collided with a car carrying
two girls and their mother, all of whom were crushed to death. It did not even make
the news in Baghdad.
No wonder the occupying powers – or the “international forces” as we must now call
them – steadfastly refuse to reveal the statistics of Iraqi dead, only their own
Even the deaths we do know about during the past 36 hours make shocking reading. At
Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad, gunmen killed two Iraqi police officers travelling to
their station. In Kirkuk, an
Iraqi policeman, Luay Abdullah, was shot as he waited for a lift home after guarding
an oil pipeline. A Kurdish woman and her two children were killed when someone
sprayed their home in Kirkuk with gunfire. A Kurdish peshmerga guerrilla was
murdered in a drive-by shooting.
A former government official was killed in Baghdad. Then yesterday afternoon, a
senior civil servant at the Iraqi Interior Ministry in Baghdad was shot dead. In the
town of Buhriz, hours of fighting between insurgents and US troops left 15 dead,
according to the Americans. All, they said, were gunmen, although it almost always
transpires that civilians are among the dead in such battles.
American documents say insurgent groups “have become more sophisticated and may be
co-ordinating their anti-coalition efforts, posing an even more significant threat”.
There is an increase in drive-by shootings. And, a chilling remark this, for all
would-be travellers in and out of Baghdad, the Americans believe “recent attacks on
air assets suggest that all type of aircraft, civilian, fixed-wing and military …
are seen as potential targets of opportunity”.
So the war is getting worse. The casualties are growing by the week. And Mr Blair
thinks Iraq is safer.
Independent (London) July 29, 2004, Thursday
Iraqi recruits bombed as 100 die in day of bloodshed
By Robert Fisk
Yet again, the Iraqi police – and their hordes of impoverished
would-be recruits – were massacred yesterday, up to a hundred of
them in the Sunni Muslim city of Baquba as they lined up,
unprotected, along a boulevard in the hope of finding work.
The bomber – identity, as usual, unknown – drove his Renault car
into a mass of 600 unemployed young men looking for jobs in the
police force, detonated his explosives and cut them to pieces. The
bomb left a seven-foot hole in the road and wounded at least
another 150 men and women, many of them shopping in a market.
The pattern is familiar and the American-appointed Iraqi authorities,
who have little control over Baquba, appear powerless to prevent
such attacks. The police station there was surrounded by vast
concrete blast walls but there had been so many men arriving at
8am to seek recruitment – the bomber, of course, would have
known the time to strike – that police officers ordered many of them
to queue along the open dual carriageway outside.
It was a death sentence. For more than three hours, rescue workers
and medical staff were picking up body parts from the road and
from burnt- out cars and buses.
Only two weeks ago, a suicide car bomber blew himself up at
another recruiting centre, this time for the new Iraqi army in
Mahmudiyah, and on 17 June, yet another bomber rammed his
explosives-laden car into a crowd of men hoping to join the police
at another recruitment building, killing 35 men.
The police are now in the principal firing line but America’s hopes
of lessening their own casualties by putting them there do not
appear to be bearing out.
Yet another American soldier, from the 1st Infantry Division, was
killed on Tuesday night when a roadside bomb blew up beneath his
Humvee vehicle, wounding three other US personnel. He was the
904th American soldier to be killed since the invasion of Iraq
began.
Police stations are themselves little fortresses in the besieged
towns and cities of Iraq. When I visited the Amariya serious crimes
squad headquarters of the Iraqi police in Baghdad yesterday, I
found five nervous cops standing on duty outside, next to seven
black banners commemorating seven police officers who have
been killed in just the past six weeks.
Another banner, commemorating the murder of a police lieutenant
colonel in the organised crime branch, whose vehicle was hit in
Baghdad by a rocket- propelled grenade, hung over the main door
of the station. The cops on the gate were joking about whether they
would go to heaven or hell if they were killed.
I sat with them for several minutes. Watching the approach of cars,
it seems, concentrates the mind wonderfully. The most optimistic
response I could find inside the station came from a police colonel:
“I cannot say that things are getting better,” he said.
A mysterious battle between police and insurgents – with American
and Ukrainian troops alongside the police – left seven more
policemen dead and, according to the authorities, 35 insurgents
killed, with many others taken prisoner at Souweya, near Kut-al-
Imara yesterday.
So dangerous is Iraq now that yet again no Western reporters
dared to travel to the location and it was unclear whether the
gunmen were Sunni insurgents or members of the Shia Army of
Mehdi of Muqtada Sadr, although this seems unlikely. US forces
and Sadr’s men are maintaining a ceasefire in Najaf and, though
Souweya is a Shia town, it has not previously been the scene of
any violent clashes.
Yet many of the individual Iraqi tragedies simply go unrecorded.
Only yesterday, for example, did a single Iraqi newspaper report
the killing of almost an entire family at Latefiya last Friday. Ala’a
Hussein and his wife, Dekrayat, had been returning to Baghdad
after attending the funeral of a relative at Najaf, with his sister-in-
law, Leila Zechi, her husband, Othman, and their two daughters,
Estabraket, 9, and Nada, 6. They were driving in the family’s Land
Cruiser, a vehicle often used by Western mercenaries.
As Mr Hussein drove through the city, he was overtaken by a pick-
up truck filled with gunmen who opened fire with automatic
weapons for more than a minute. All save Othman Zechi were
killed instantly.
Independent (London) July 29, 2004, Thursday
Unreported war: US document reveals scale of conflict
By Robert Fisk
Iraq, we are told by Mr Blair, is safer. It is not. US military reports
clearly show much of the violence in Iraq is not revealed to
journalists, and thus goes largely unreported. This account of the
insurgency across Iraq over three days last week provides
astonishing proof that Iraq under its new, American-appointed
Prime Minister, has grown more dangerous and violent.
But even this is only a partial record of events. US casualties and
dozens of Iraqi civilian deaths each day are not included in the
reports. But here are the events, as recorded by the United States
military on 20, 22 and 23 July. Few were publicly disclosed.
20 July Baghdad
A US aircraft was attacked by a surface-to-air missile over
Baghdad airport. An improvised explosive device detonated under
a bridge near al-Bayieh fire station. A second bomb exploded when
the “Facility Protection Service” arrived. In other areas, there were
four bombings, three RPG assaults and six gun attacks, almost all
on US forces.
North of Baghdad
A civilian supply convoy was attacked at Samarra. A bomb
exploded on a bus in Baquba, killing six. A mine went off in Balad.
A US convoy was attacked with RPGs and gunfiree at Salman Pak.
There were roadside bombings of US forces at Mandali, Samarra,
Baquba, Duluiya and Muqdadiyeh, and three grenade attacks (at
Tikrit, Samarra and Kirkuk, with shootings at Muqdadiyeh, Balad,
Hawija, Samarra, Tikrit and Khalis.
West of Baghdad
An American foot patrol set off a landmine at Khalidiya. A civilian
tractor hit a mine at Hit. There was an RPG attack on a school in
Karmah. Roadside and other bombs also detonated in Fallujah, Hit,
Ramadi and Qaim. There were also attacks on US troops at Hit,
Karmah, Saqlawiyeh and Ramadi.
South of Baghdad
International troops discovered two 107mm rockets aimed at the
house of the governor of Diwakineh, and a roadside bomb
detonated near Iskanderiyeh. In Basra, the city council co-ordinator
and his three bodyguards were killed near a police checkpoint by
three men in police uniform.
22 July Baghdad
Two roadside bombs exploded next to a van and a Mercedes in
separate areas of Baghdad, killing four civilians. A gunman in a
Toyota opened fire on a police checkpoint and escaped. Police
wounded three gunmen at a checkpoint and arrested four men
suspected of attempted murder. Seven more roadside bombs
exploded in Baghdad and gunmen twice attacked US troops.
North of Baghdad
Police dismantled a car bomb in Mosul and gunmen attacked the
Western driver of a gravel truck at Tell Afar). There were three
roadside bombings and a rocket attack on US troops in Mosul and
another gun attack on US forces near Tell Afar. At Taji, a civilian
vehicle collided with a US military vehicle, killing six civilians and
injuring seven others. At Bayji, a US vehicle hit a landmine. The
Americans said gunmen murdered a dentist in at the Ad Dwar
hospital. There were 17 roadside bomb explosions against US
forces in Taji, Baquba, Baqua, Jalula, Tikrit, Paliwoda, Balad,
Samarra and Duluiyeh, with attacks by gunmen on US troops in
Tikrit and Balad. A headless body in an orange jump-suit was found
in the Tigris; believed to be Bulgarian hostage, Ivalyo Kepov.
Kirkuk air base, used by US forces, attacked.
West of Baghdad
Five roadside bombs on US forces in Rutbah, Kalso and Ramadi.
Gunmen attacked Americans in Fallujah and Ramadi.
South of Baghdad
The police chief of Najaf was abducted. Two civilian contractors
were attacked by gunmen at Haswah. A roadside bomb exploded
near Kerbala and Hillah. International forces were attacked by
gunmen at Al Qurnah.
23 July Baghdad
A US military convoy was mortared and a grenade thrown. There
were seven roadside bomb attacks and five gun attacks on US
forces.
North of Baghdad
A man threw a grenade at a US convoy at Tell Afar. Two gunmen
killed an officer in the new Iraqi Army in Mosul. American troops
also came under RPG fire in Mosul. Gunmen attacked a convoy of
western mercenaries south of Samarra, a civilian convoy was
attacked at Baquba. A former Iraqi army officer, former Major-
General Salim Blaish died in a drive- by shooting in Mosul.
Americans detained two men who had fired a rocket from a truck in
Balad. There were three roadside bomb attacks on Americans in
Baquba, Balad and an RPG attack at Kirkuk.
West of Baghdad
A roadside bomb against US forces at Rutbah. Gunmen also
attacked the Americans in Khalidiyeh and Fallujah.
South of Baghdad
The Mussayib power station was mortared and roadside bombs
exploded at Iskanderiyeh and Mussayib.
Tommie Sue Montgomery-Abrahams
19 Blue Water Avenue, RR6
Lindsay, Ontario K9V 4R6
Canada
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