September 2002

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Witnessing in Iraq

Kathy Kelly leads the work of Voices in the Wilderness, opposing sanctions against Iraq, carrying aid to the Iraqi people, and bearing witness to their plight: <www.nonviolence.org/vitw> 1460 West Carmen Ave., Chicago IL 60640; 773/784-8065.

As US war planners design a massive military assault against Iraq, we seldom hear concern about the costs for ordinary Iraqis. After 12 years of sanctions, siege, and periodic bombardment, I'm not surprised that so many people, in my most recent visits, murmured in anguish, "I cannot continue. I cannot go on." Having borne the wounds of war with no end in sight, they must brace themselves yet again for fierce attacks.

Children crossing ditch filled with raw sewage, Basra, Iraq, summer 2000 © Alan Pogue www.documentaryphotographs.com

The media has bamboozled the US public into thinking that only one person lives in Iraq--Saddam Hussein. Four days after the Desert Fox bombing, on December 22, 1998, the San Francisco Chronicle opened an editorial with these words: "Once again, the durable despot, Saddam Hussein, has emerged from the rubble, spitting defiance and claiming victory." Absent from their coverage was any mention of the people who never emerged from the rubble. Nor was there any coverage of the hundreds of thousands of ordinary Iraqis whose arms ache for loved whose deaths were caused by economic sanctions.

On December 19, 1998, the fourth night of the "Desert Fox" bombing, I and three companions from Voices in the Wilderness, accompanied by our driver, Sattar, arrived in Baghdad. US and UK air forces had relentlessly assaulted Iraq for the past three days. Speaking of the intense bombardments, Sattar said, "All the walls, they shake, and the children scream and cry. But what can you do? In Baghdad, even a maternity hospital was badly damaged. No place is safe."

We reached Baghdad as night fell. Sattar took us to visit Karima and her six children, just settling down to sleep in the room they share. The children were excited to see us. Seven-year-old Mahmoud generally gives me a kiss on each cheek and then dashes off. That night, he clung to me. Then, suddenly, a neighbor rushed in shouting "Yalla! Yalla!" as he pointed outside. "The bombing has started again," said Sattar, his voice filled with simple dismay.

Anxious to let Sattar return to his family, we left Karima and checked in at the Al Fanar hotel a few blocks away. Explosions continued, but the hotel staff was unfailingly warm and polite. "Welcome, you are welcome," they said.

The next morning, we visited the Yarmouk hospital, where we met Dr. Gasim Risun. His jaw was broken, he had lost hearing in one ear, and he had huge bruises on his forearm and forehead. His eye was also badly bruised, and the left side of his face was paralyzed. Gasim and his family were sleeping in their living room when a missile crashed through the wall. The missile didn't explode, so he, his wife and his three children crawled out alive. His wife and his daughter were also hospitalized. Nine-year-old Susan's condition was the most precarious. Hit in the head by a chunk of flying cement, she needed neurosurgery.

On another ward, we met Entissar, a young woman whose intestine was ruptured by a flying piece of shrapnel. She feared becoming infected. There was only one colostomy bag in the entire hospital. Physicians washed it out and "shared" it between patients.

On Christmas day we stopped in the village of Al Deir, in southern Iraq. A teenager held his four-year-old brother, Sajad, as his sisters described an early morning blast that blew the windows out of their home. Sajad refused to lie down at night, for fear that this would start new bombardment. A bomb had hit the nearby microwave station that served as a telecommunications center. The midwife at the local clinic told us that ten terrified women had spontaneously aborted the first night of the bombing. Throughout the village, children had wailed in fear.

Umm Heyder lives in the Jumuriyah district of Basra. This young and striking mother of four was waiting in line at the Basrah Pediatrics and Gynecology hospital clinic because she had just suffered a miscarriage. In January of 1999, she was in her kitchen washing dishes when she heard a loud explosion and saw something dark pass before her window. Suddenly the dishes in her shelves were falling down on her. She checked to see that her two youngest children, playing at her feet, were all right and then looked for her older boys who were playing outdoors. "Where is Heyder? Where is Mustafa?" She found Heyder, buried beneath the rubble, already dead, and then spotted Mustafa, alive but covered with blood, his hand severed from his arm. She scooped him into her arms and ran for help.

We travel to Iraq with a pittance of medical relief, earnestly wanting to offer some kind of hope, but mainly able only to whisper, "We're sorry. We're so very sorry," as we sit, helpless, at bedsides of agonized children. Even these words caught in my throat in April of '99 at the Dijla Secondary School for Girls. "They are really angry," the headmistress apologized. Sixten-year-old Leila's voice should have been bursting with life and excitement, at her age, but it was high-pitched, fraught, anxious. "You come and you say 'You will do. You will do,' but nothing changes! All what we see is paper, promises. I am 16. Can you tell me what is the difference between me and someone who is 16 in your country? I'll tell you. Our emotions are frozen. We cannot feel!"

Indelibly marked in my memory is a February '98 visit to Fallujah, just outside of Baghdad. We traveled there, during the height of a US bombing threat, to visit the site where in '91 a Royal Air Force bomb, aimed at a bridge, missed and hit the crowded market. The explosion killed 150 people and wounded many more. Accompanied by a film crew, we wanted to interview Fallujah's residents while the whole country awaited renewed attacks.

Soon a throng of people surrounded us. Angry shouting began. "You Americans and Europeans!" an older man shouted. "I'll take you to my home and show you water you wouldn't give your animals to drink! This is what kills us, kills our children, and now you want to bomb us too." Suddenly he stopped. Looking at me closely, he said, "Madame, you are too tired. Come, you take something to eat with me."

Over the past several years, we've observed "cosmetic" improvements in the hospitals, but doctors still lack reliable access to needed medicines and equipment. Patients whose charts are marked with NA--not available--face ongoing illness and death. During a December 2001 visit to a hospital in Mosul, I commented on how well-equipped the Cardiac Care Unit looked compared to what we had seen elsewhere. Dr. Hamid Zacharia, the chief resident, grimaced. There are 14 beds in the unit, but only two monitors, and there is no central control station. Who gets the two monitors? "I have no other choice," said Dr. Zacharia, "I choose the most critical."

An electrocardiogram machine was delivered, but alas, no paper. They have a kidney dialysis unit, but lack filters.

Dr. Zacharia and his colleagues feel frightened, uncertain, helpless, and frustrated. "If we lose the patient, we continuously blame ourselves," he says. "Yet, we need 'weapons' to fight disease. We are soldiers in the front without weapons. As for the impending war, he told us, "You know, we worked hard. We rebuilt much of our country. It is very difficult to see it attacked again. But if they plan this, what can we do?"

En route to Mosul, I'd read a report from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an American-Israeli think tank, about usage of psychological weapons to wear down the morale of Iraq's people. The report's author writes, "Such efforts could keep Saddam on the defensive and create an atmosphere of crisis and tension." Do Dr. Zacharia's feelings of helplessness and loss signal victorious gains for the US?

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