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Many
of the dead were children.
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Iraqis—engulfed
in an unimaginable loss throughout thirteen years of sanctions
and bombings—were reviled, insulted, but attacked no one. The
US’s response to the 9/11 tragedy has been little short of
genocide: Two entire civil societies (with no nationals on the
9/11 flights) have been reduced to a pre-industrial state,
illegally occupied by asset strippers, whose armies ensure that
the dead remain uncounted and inconsequential—except to the
grieving. Obviously, to the US, Iraqis’ lives have long been
cheap. In 1996 Madeleine Albright, then US Ambassador to the UN,
was asked if the price of half a million Iraqi children was
worth it. “I think this is a very hard choice, but the
price—we think the price is worth it,” she replied.
The
meticulous team at Iraq
Body Count (IBC) is attempting to account for civilian
deaths. As of July 12, 2004, 11,164 are recorded. Statistics,
however, do not convey what deaths really mean and how they
impact those who lose loved ones.
“In
remembrance,” IBC has painstakingly compiled 692 names—as of
March 2004. They leap from the pages: 421 men, 106 women and 94
children. Fatima, 8, Mawra, 9, Mohammed, 6, Zainab, 5, Saif, 11,
Mohammed, 2, Tabarak, 8, Noor 6 months... Eleven members of the
family of Sader Hamzeb Youssa, Sahar Salhan, her husband and
their unborn son...
They
died from cluster bombs, missiles, rockets and shrapnel. They
died engaged in normal daily activities.
They
died before Fallujah’s
toll—caused by the siege,
before knowledge of torture and deaths in Coalition prisons, and
photographs of laughter beside a pyramid of naked Iraqis at Abu
Ghraib prison—a scene reminiscent of the naked dead at
Bergen-Belsen under the Nazis. And there are certainly worse
revelations to come.
Since
no one is guarding the guards (there are reports that the US
General who instigated the inhuman procedures at Abu Ghraib is
in charge of the investigation into the very scandal), the
illegal and inhuman can go un-noticed or quickly forgotten: just
another day’s “regrettable”—a word the US military is
fond of using—statistic.
There
are those in Iraq determined this will not be the case. Small,
independent organizations like Christian
Peacemaker Teams and Iraq
Occupation Watch witness and record the unbearable,
determined that accountability must, eventually, prevail.
It
was Eman Ahmed Khammas of Iraq Occupation Watch who traveled the
dangerous western road to establish the facts regarding the
infamous wedding
massacre at Mugrldeeb village near the Syrian border.
Hamdan
was collecting parts of bodies and matching them. |
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Alqaim,
420 kilometers west of Baghdad, has the nearest hospital to the
village. Khammas talked to hospital Director Dr. Hamdi
Al-Aloosi, who described the carnage resulting from a day
dedicated to celebration. Iraqi weddings have a special gaiety:
Guests pile into battered vehicles, play music, sing, ululate,
leap off moving vehicles, dance in the road and somehow leap
back on again unscathed. Weddings spell joy. Not this one.
“Early
in the morning,” said the doctor, “on May 19, we received .
. . [many] injured, from Mugrldeeb. . . The majority. . .
children and women. Those who brought them were terrified and hysterical.
. . so confused that they were asking us what had happened, as
if an earthquake hit the village.” Forty-two of the victims
were dead: 14 were children under 12 and 11 were women, he said.
Nine others had severe injuries. “Many of the dead were shot
in the head, chest, and abdomen.”
They
managed to save an eight-month baby in the hospital. Faisal
(10), with severe injuries, remained in the hospital. The doctor
knew the families, confirming there were no foreigners brought
in (the US military claimed the attack was because they were
“insurgents”). “They are from the Albo Fahad tribe, Rakaad
Naif family. . . .
Whole
families were killed. One of the dead women was found holding
her baby by her teeth after both her hands were injured,” said
Dr. Al-Aloos, adding that the tiny village had about 200
inhabitants; so nearly a quarter died.
Ten-year-old
Feisal Mohammed Rekaad had catheters going out of his chest and
abdomen, his right foot bandaged, and shrapnel in his knee. “I
was sleeping when I heard the shooting, we ran away. . . to
hide.” Obviously, he was shot and he lost consciousness. He
did not know what happened to his brother Inad (6), his two
sisters and his mother, Fatima, who were with him. They are
dead.
Adil
Rijab Mikhlif (35) has his head and arms heavily bandaged, face
badly scratched. “I. . . helped in the preparations. . . built
the tent. . . brought cooking gas in my pickup.” At about
10:30 p.m. the guests “heard the noise of an airplane for a
long time. After dinner, we stopped the music, ended the party
and went to sleep. They said that the situation was not so
comfortable, but we actually slept until 1 am. We were 25 men in
the tent. The musicians were with us. Around 2:30 I woke up with
the shooting” and went to see what was happening.
“There
were bullets coming from the airplane. . . . A car. . . [caught]
fire. . . then my car was shot. There were about 17 cooking gas
tubes; they exploded.” Badly injured with shrapnel, with a
finger lost on his left hand, he dazed, “My ears and mouth
were paralyzed.” He ran for about five kilometers to reach
other houses in the village.
Hamdan
Khalaf (18) was taking care of Feisal. He, too, helped with
party preparations, and also painted the bridal bedroom. Hearing
the shooting, he ran with the band singer, Basim Al-Ali. All who
ran, he said, were shot at, most killed. “They never left
anyone moving. . . [Paratroops] searched the house, and they
killed the injured. 2 helicopters came at dawn and took the
soldiers. Then. . . a black airplane came and shot Rekad’s
house and his son’s house with missiles. They demolished
them.”
Then?
There
was a big dark red spot to which Hamid pointed: the
bride’s blood. |
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“I
helped putting the bodies into the truck. We were collecting
parts of bodies, matching them and put them in a single
piece.” Hamdan thinks he “matched” 30 bodies, among
them 15 women and many children. Introduction to democracy and
liberation in the age of eighteen.
Mugrldeeb,
a scattering of houses mostly some distance apart in Iraq’s
western “moonscape” desert, is populated by huge herds of
sheep and goats. Thousands, says Eman. The houses, replacing
elaborate tents, belong to sheep traders. The scene that greeted
Eman and her photographer and guide, Samir Jigheifi—a shepherd
for the bridegroom’s father—was reminiscent of Vietnam’s
“Apocalypse Now”:
Two
neighboring houses were largely destroyed, their roofs leveled
to the ground, their glass smashed. Cracked walls “were
covered with hundreds of bullet shots. . . . There were two
pickups, a water tank and a big truck torn with bullets and
burned. . . a broken musical double stereo. . . shoes of
different sizes, many were children’s. . . [blood-stained]
pieces of clothes that women wear in rural Iraq. . . toys,
girls’ hair buckles, domino pieces, and camera batteries.
Behind the house there were tens of pots, trays, kitchen stuff.
. . [improvised] bread ovens, stoves, a sack of rice, tomato
paste cans. . . [sacks filled with leftovers for] the
animals—all were shot with thousands of bullets, shrapnel. We
counted at least 25 holes in one dish.” Everything indicated
remains of preparations for a typical rural wedding party. Big
parties are signs of social prestige.
“Teiseer,
our camera man was shouting ‘Come, come here!’” Eman
Khammas remarked. There was a sheep pen and by it, a big dark
red spot. “This is one of the women’s blood,” said Hamid
Ataalla (25), another villager and rescuer. There were, he said,
many more “blood testimonies.”
The
next ten minutes they witnessed the unimaginable: “The ground
was full of bullets holes of different sizes, spots of blood
every where, some a meter wide. In some of them the remains of
human flesh were drying in the sun. . . . In one of these
remains there was a long black lock still attached to the flesh.
I could not see any more. I ran away back to the demolished
house.”
Hamid,
too, described the day: “It was the wedding of Azhad Rekaad
Naif. The party began in the afternoon as usual. The music and
dancing continued until ten. . . . [During] dinner we heard. . .
an airplane. . . for a long time. We did not feel comfortable
about it. The men decided to end the party after dinner. At
eleven. . . guests left, only those who came from far away
remained. Rekaad said it is no longer safe to stay, but. . . the
women were too tired to move with the sleeping children.”
Hamid
was sleeping in his house when he heard the shooting, around
2:30-3 a.m. “Two helicopters were. . . firing at the Rekaad
houses, for more than an hour. Then around 5 am we saw many
soldiers. . . going around the houses [with torches]. We heard
them shooting at the injured people. . . lying on the ground.
One of the injured women, her name is Iqbal, they found bullets
from. . . [an] American gun in her body. They searched the
house. They took. . . money and. . . gold from the dead women.
They took the camera and the films. The camera man, Yaser, and
his assistant Ammar were killed. I saw Rekaad’s wife, she was
lying here. This is her blood. . . . Many were. . . [shot] in
the head. Around six [a.m.] two. . . helicopters (Chinook) came;
they took the soldiers. After few minutes a black [low-flying]
fighter came. . . . It hit the two houses with missiles and
[destroyed them]. . . as you can see. There were [five] armored
vehicles too. . . but they did not come close.”
There
was a big dark red spot to which Hamid pointed: the bride’s
blood. There were small golden bullets.
Khammas
also met the bridegroom’s father. “Rekaad is a man in his
mid sixties. He looked tired and ill. . . . [His son, the
bridegroom] was covering his head and part of his face with a
red shmagh. He never raised his eyes from the ground ; he never
talked or paid any attention to what was going on.”
Rekaad
welcomed Eman. “My daughter,” he told her, “I am an old
poor man. I put all my sons, daughters, grandchildren under the
ground. They killed every one in my family. I am very sad. But
what makes me even sadder is that they are saying these lies
about me. All I did was a wedding party for my son, which every
one does.”
An
old man sitting beside Rekaad said, “Let them give us one
single evidence of what they say, anything. But they are liars.
They slaughtered all these women and children; they even steal
their gold and money.”
Eman
continued, “He began to tell what happened in the night of May
18-19. It was exactly the same story we got from every one
else--the helicopters (Apache), the armored vehicles, the
continuous heavy shooting, the paratroops, the black fighters
and the killing of the injured.”
“How
many people were killed in your family?” Khammas asked
Rekaad’s brother
“25, many of them women and children,” he replied.
Khammas
asked for a list, and they gave it:
1.
Mohammad Rekaad, 28
2.
Ahmed Rekaad, 26
3.
Talib Rekaad, 27
4.
Mizhir Rekaad, 20
5.
Daham Rekaad, 17
6.
Saad Mohammad Rekaad
7.
Marifa Obeid, Rekaad’s wife
8.
Fatima Madhi, Rekaad’s daughter in law
9.
Raad Ahmed, grandson, 3
10.
Ra’id Ahmed, grandson, 2
11.
Wa’ad Ahmed, grandson, 1 month
12.
Inad Mohammad, grandson, 6
13.
Anood Mohammad, granddaughter, 5
14.
Amal Rekaad, daughter, 30
15.
Anood Talib, granddaughter, 2
16.
Kholood Talib, granddaughter, 6 months
17.
Hamid Monif, son in law, 22
18.
Somayia Nawaf, wife, 50
19.
Siham Rekaad, daughter, 18
20.
Hamda Suleiman, wife, 45
21.
Rabha Rekaad daughter, 16
22.
Zahra Rekaad daughter,15
23.
Fatima Rekaad daughter, 4
24.
Ali Rekaad son, 12
25.
Hamza Rekaad, 6
Five
from a family called Garaghool also died, thirteen of the band
and three photographic crew—thus, the total number of victims
is 46.
Kholood,
8 months, Sabha, 22, Iqbal 14, Mouza, 12, Feisal and Adil, are
still in hospital.
The
eyewitness reports and the police report have a compelling
consistency. Further, many witnesses were visited separately,
mostly by surprise visits.
The
US military did not respond to Iraq Occupation Watch’s
questions following their return.
Brigadier
General Mark Kimmitt, whose way with words and disregard for
humanity and US homicides may mark his place in the annals of
the infamous, dismissed the tragedy: “Bad people have parties
too.” When he was previously queried on civilian deaths at the
hands of US troops aired on TV, he advised, “Change the
channel.”
An
ancient, vital question must be asked of the behavior of this
occupation force: “Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?” (Who
guards the guards?)
This
is dedicated to those who risk so much trying to monitor and
record facts about the crisis in Iraq—and above all, to the
people of Iraq, their martyrs, and the children of the embargo,
invasion and occupation, whose lives, for the world’s only
superpower, are a price worth paying.
Felicity
Arbuthnot is a journalist and activist who has visited
Iraq on numerous occasions since the 1991Gulf War. She has
written and broadcast widely on Iraq, her coverage of which
was nominated for several awards. She was also Senior Researcher
for John
Pilger's award-winning documentary Paying
the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq.
