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A confrontation between Iraqis and US soldiers in Fallujah in April 2003
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IslamOnline hosted a
live
dialogue session with the interviewees in this
article—Harb
and Umm Dania.
It
shows in the individuals here—the love of their country,
displayed by working so hard to help Iraqis. But under a brutal
and bloody occupation where bombings in
Baghdad
have become the norm, this love oftentimes shows itself by
frustration, anger and grief.
When
most Iraqis I talk with discuss the state of their country, they
speak longingly of the past. Not to glorify the regime of Saddam
Hussein, but a distant memory of some form of order, security,
and infrastructure. This fondness is born of a ravaged country
with open borders where criminals and negative outside
influences are streaming through like water through a sieve.
This, coupled with
US
tanks rumbling down the streets and high civilian casualties
amidst the military occupation, has left
Iraq
a crumbled replica of what it used to be.
This
has been the hardest on people who worked before—during times
when there was that structure, stability and security, flawed as
they were.
My
interpreter Harb is one of these Iraqis.
“Salam,
I’m going to be 5 minutes late,” he says over the phone.
“I’m very sorry for the delay.” This is my fixer Harb.
Apologizing for being stuck in
Baghdad
traffic, which is oftentimes caused by a bomb nowadays.
No
amount of money could possibly compensate this man for how he
treats me. With my work and mobility nearly completely dependent
upon him, I could not possibly ask for a better translator/fixer
as a foreign journalist in occupied
Iraq. But even more importantly, he has become a dear friend.
“Do you know how many Iraqis have been killed in all these wars? Do you know how many died because of the sanctions?” |
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This
is a man working hard to help get the truth out about what is
occurring in his country. His love for his country shows daily,
expressed at times by his grief and frustration towards what his
home city of
Baghdad
has been reduced to under the occupation.
Last
December while returning from Ramadi, he told me how the once
proud Iraqi Army, the envy of the Arab countries, had been
stepped on by the
US
military. Not so much that it was crushed by the mightiest
military force in the world, but that the soldiers had been
displaced, with no income, no work, and were struggling to feed
their families. He was so sad because, as an ex-Iraqi military
man himself, it hurt him to see his country and its people in
such a state.
We
had news at that time of a large group of Iraqi soldiers
quitting the new army because of pay and because of death
threats by the resistance. Those who had stayed in did so
because they were desperate for the money. Another example of
how it is the average Iraqi who is caught in the middle of all
of this.
And
this situation Harb described then remains just as true, if not
more so, today in
Iraq.
He
was crying while he drove me back to his capital that night,
weeping for his destroyed country. “Do you know how many
Iraqis have been killed in all these wars? Do you know how many
died because of the sanctions? Can you see what has happened to
my country?” This he said while we passed bombed homes,
mutilated Iraqi tanks on the sides of the highway, and people
living in poverty in shanties.
“They can take our oil. They can take our money. But they will never take Iraq. Iraq is ours.” |
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After
driving some more we stopped for tea in Fallujah. The men
serving us our chai (tea) were angry about the state of their
country. One of them said, “We are together here. They can
take our oil. They can take our money. But they will never take
Iraq.
Iraq
is ours.”
Back
in the car Harb told me, “Now I have joy in my heart. People
here are proud of their country. They are not only for the money
like so many in
Baghdad. This is the real morale of
Iraq, not what you see so much in
Baghdad.”
Last
April, when so many of the people of Fallujah took up arms to
repel the mightiest military to ever exist on the planet, the
words of Harb took on a new meaning.
Today
Harb is still weeping for the state of his country. Yesterday,
while fighting our way through the horrendous traffic towards a
hospital, we passed women and children begging at the sides of
the streets and a
US
military patrol rumbling. He said, “Oh Baghdad, what has
become of you?”
Once
there, the assistant manager Dr. Hayder Al-Safar told us how
there were no problems there, that if they ever had shortages of
any medicines he called the US-funded Ministry of Health and
within days they were provided.
I
stared at him blankly while making it a point not to ask him the
question in my mind, which was, “So doctor, how much, exactly,
do they pay you to lie?”
See,
it was just weeks earlier that I’d visited this very hospital.
“Oh Baghdad, what has become of you?” |
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At
that time, Dr. Namin Rashid, the chief resident, stated that the
only medical help his hospital had received lately had been a
load of medical supplies from Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani. He
complained that the Ministry of Health consistently failed to
give them enough supplies, and his hospital only had 100 sets of
IVs and blood transfusion equipment. This hospital serves 5,000
patients each day.
He
stated then, “We are getting less medical supplies now than we
were during the sanctions.” He said his hospital was receiving
only half as much supplies as it had been prior to the invasion.
He
stated, “The Ministry [of Health] talks a lot, but they do no
action for us.” He said that people were getting injured or
killed on their way to the hospital because of the dismal
security situation. “Bremer came here and talked a lot at the
beginning of the occupation, but nothing has changed.”
His
anger and frustration was palpable when he talked about the
gunshot victims he treated, who were shot at US checkpoints, and
he said that he too was afraid to even leave his hospital.
He
was outraged at the fact that his hospital treated 10-20 gunshot
victims each day, whereas before the invasion they had treated
an average of one per week, sometimes only one per month.
But
it had been a little while since Dr. Rashid had told me these
things; so Harb and I decided to go get a second opinion about
what Dr. Al-Safar had just told us.
Harb,
who is like a guided missile when it comes to getting to the
heart of things regarding gathering information for my stories,
insisted we go straight to the supply room of the hospital.
There
we met Dr. Umm Dania at her desk. She is responsible for
assisting in running the supply distribution for the hospital.
At first reluctant to talk with me about supply shortages, I let
her know Dr. Al-Safar had told me everything was great.
“Even if the Americans stay here 15 years, there will be no security.” |
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“He
says these things but he knows better,” she said while sitting
very still. “We tell him what we need, and he says that he
asks the Ministry of Health but they don’t give it to him; so
why bother?”
She
was weary of the broken promises from the coalition, scattered
like useless debris over the wreckage of her shattered country.
Like Harb, she is heartbroken, frustrated, and angry at what
Baghdad
has been reduced to.
“This
is just like
Afghanistan,” she said while beginning to open up more about things that
she had obviously been internalizing. “We lack everything
here.”
Her
talk goes straight to those responsible for the lack of
supplies—those funding and controlling the Ministry of Health:
the US-led CPA (now dissolved after the “power
handover”).
“They’ve
destroyed the foundations of
Iraq
—what do you think we can do with no foundations?” she
asked, her eyes looking deeply into mine as I wrote furiously on
my notepad while maintaining eye contact. “Even if the
Americans stay here 15 years, there will be no security.”
Her
dark eyes were like lasers as her focused discussion seared into
one topic after another. She was on fire.
“The
West knows what is happening here but nobody can stand up to the
colonial superpower
America. Look at this hospital! Anything they do or build is
superficial, not fundamental,” she stated firmly. “Bush is a
great actor while he speaks of freedom.”
She
shifted to the prison scandal: “Abu Ghraib attacked the
dignity of the Iraqi people. Americans didn’t become
barbarians from killing Indians, Vietnamese, Central Americans,
Afghanis, and bombing us and our young children who now have
psychological scars?”
“I
never liked Saddam, nor did I support him, but at least under
the dictator there were order and some basic services,” she
continued vehemently, her eyes becoming more intense. “Now
there is no order, no electricity, no fundamental stability.”
“I never liked Saddam, nor did I support him, but at least under the dictator there were order and some basic services.” |
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Harb
suggested that she be careful, speaking so sternly about the
failure of the occupation. She looked piercingly at him and
said; “I am afraid, but not for myself. I’m not afraid to
tell the truth; I’m only afraid for my family.”
Nevertheless,
she continued to express her anger.
“So
many Iraqis said the Americans would treat them better than
Saddam, but when they saw the Americans stealing and killing,
the Iraqis started to think differently about them.”
Though
the topic was dancing about, the passion of her feelings linked
it all together. “The bad side of the Americans has been
exposed to Iraqis now, and this is what we are seeing,” she
said while referencing the indiscriminate street killings, Abu
Ghraib and the wedding party massacre. “Me and my husband used
to want to go to America,” she said before taking a long pause
without looking away.
The
next words were from her eyes, and she said, “Now… never.”
She
told us a story of a truck that was turning around near a
US
tank, and was shot because it was too close. Everyone in it was
severely injured; many had lost their eyes in the shrapnel. She
was the doctor who wrote up the report, and had written
“occupying forces” for those responsible for destroying the
truck. She said that the administrator of Yarmouk Hospital
crossed out “occupying,” then crossed out “forces” from
the report.
“So
the truck just exploded on its own?” she asked.
Several
seconds were allowed to pass to drive home her point.
She
then told of a car full of medications for them that was
traveling from the airport when it was shot by a passing tank,
“and the tank did not even stop,” she added.
Her
anger from being on the front lines of treating the casualties
churned out on a daily basis by the occupation forces was
palpable.
“Some
Iraqis still believe the Americans are here to help them,” she
said in disbelief. “I pray that God shows them what the
Americans are like,” she said unmoving, her eyes unwavering.
“I pray that God sicks the Americans on them so they will see
for themselves.”
She
asked us if the occupation forces suffered from psychological
problems, because she didn’t think it is possible for anyone
to do and say the things they do and say in
Iraq
and still be healthy.
She
looked even deeper into my eyes and said, “Don’t imagine
that the
US
has come here to do us any good.”
Harb
asked her who her husband was, wondering if her strong opinions
had been influenced by him.
She
looked directly at him and said, “These are MY thoughts and
emotions. Who my husband might be is irrelevant to my
beliefs.”
We
thanked her and walked out of the hospital to find several
Humvees out front, en route to what a security guard told us was
yet another bombing.
Harb
and I continue on with our work, while Umm Dania continues
distributing medicine to the sick and injured Iraqis in war-torn
Baghdad.
Nagem Salam is an American journalist of Lebanese descent who
has worked in Iraq
for a total of four months since the Anglo-American invasion of
spring 2003. His articles focus on Iraqis, and how the
occupation of their country affects their daily life.
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