Haditha Killings are Tip of the Iceberg

Last November US Marines intentionally killed 24 civilians in Iraq’s western town of Haditha. This, plus another killing in April, are—finally—making its way to the mainstream news in the US and a Congressional and military investigation are underway.

But, the investigation should expand. Though rarely reported in the mainstream media, independent news sources and human rights groups have documented hundreds of Iraqi civilian deaths by US forces that were either indiscriminate or intentional.

As early as October 2003, Human Rights Watch (HRW) released the report "Hearts and Minds: Postwar Civilian Casualties in Baghdad by US Forces” in which they collected information on 94 civilian deaths in Baghdad. The group then investigated two of five civilian deaths the US military had also investigated and had concluded the soldiers acted “within the rules of engagement.” HRW found, however, that troops had used excessive force, in one case shooting a man whose hands were clearly raised.

In the same month Amnesty International called on the US government to take responsibility for tracking and investigating civilian deaths, countering General Tommy Franks infamous response “we don’t do body counts” to the question of civilian deaths.

Since the beginning of the US-led invasion Voices in the Wilderness and the Christian Peacemakers Team, both of which maintained houses in Baghdad, have also documented hundreds of civilian deaths. In August 2003, for example, VITW documented the deaths of a father and three of his children when troops shot at the whole family. They were thrown out of a press conference for asking General Sanchez about the deaths.

In both US sieges on Fallujah several eyewitness survivors told horror stories of US military personnel killing civilians. These accounts were related in numerous outlets, often by independent journalists, but also by the Associated Press, BBC, and Al-Jazeera, to name a few. Whole families were shot dead while sleeping in their beds. US snipers were found to have shot and killed children—one young boy, whose photograph has traversed the globe, lays dead still clutching a white flag of surrender. Ambulances were targeted.

While interviewing an Iraqi doctor last summer about the US-led five-day seige on Haditha's hospital in May, he said witnesses reported US troops had shot a patient dead as he lay in his hospital bed.

These are not isolated instances. Similar reports have come out of Baquba, Mosul, Karbala, Al-Qaim, and Rawa, to name a few.

At the beginning of this month, troops responded to an IED, which targeted a US convoy in Samarra, by sealing off the neighborhood. House raids followed. In one, a family were huddled together, frightened, in one room when US troops burst through the front door shooting. According to one of the surviving witnesses, who is too terrified for her safety to use even her first name, most of the people in the room were women and children. The first casualty of the indiscriminate shooting was a man of 40 who died when he wrapped his body around his father’s to protect him. The woman’s 18-month old son was in the arms of her sister.

“After the shooting, there was a terrible silence. I thought they had killed my father.” Her 20-year old sister, who had been studying for her final exams, was slumped against the wall, still holding the child. ““I tried to touch her shoulder and my son’s clothes were filled by blood. Then I realized she was dead. I tried to talk to my mother, ‘why are you laying down like this?’ When I tried to make her sit up I saw something white hanging from her. It was one of her eyes. The other eye was stuck to the wall.”

After the three were killed, soldiers took pictures of them with a digital camera, but not before dragging the 40-year old into the corridor, the witness says, and placing a gun next to his legs.

This is the second account I’ve heard of US troops placing a gun next to someone they’ve killed. This implies the soldiers knew not only that they had killed a civilian, but also that they were attempting to cover their tracks.

If Congress and military officials are serious about investigating what Rep. John Murtha has deemed killing in “cold blood,” they need to broaden their inquiry. And not just to the numbers of civilians killed, but also to those high-ranking officers and Bush Administration officials who have created a climate of untenable chaos for US troops, disregard for Iraqi civilians and have given the ok for such breeches of international law.

Building Bridges Remains Most Important to Tortured Sheikh:

an interview with Sheikh Abdul Kareem
by Karen Button

A small young boy answers the door and ushers us shyly into a small study lined with elegant green couches and chairs. He quietly slips through a side door to let his father know we’ve arrived.

Sheikh Abdul Kareem has been detained and tortured first by the Americans and then by the Iraqis. He fled to Amman, Jordan with his family almost a year ago to receive medical treatment, but is staying for safety reasons. He had, at first, refused the interview, saying he no longer would give interviews to westerners. He agreed only after a member of his mosque, who is also a friend of mine, persuaded him.

Sheik Abdul’s popular mosque, the Omar Al-Mukhtar—named after the famous Libyan mujahadin (fighter) who fought against Italian colonialism in the early 20th century—sits in the in the heart of Baghdad in Al-Yarmouk neighborhood. The Imam is known widely by Iraqis for his compassion as well as his uncompromising position on the US-led occupation. He is the head of the Omar Al-Mukhtar Association, administered by his wife, which assists families regardless of their religious affiliation. (Contrary to what many westerners may think, there is a significant Christian population in Iraq, particularly in Baghdad.) His Friday khutbah (or sermon) regularly drew 3,000 plus, some travelling—says our mutual friend who is with us—from as far away as Baquba to attend. Since Sheikh Abdul’s departure, the friend sadly notes, only 100 or so now attend.

The Sheik is dressed in a traditional dishdasha (long robe) and kuffiyeh (headdress) as he enters. He is a short man with a graying close-cropped beard, a quick smile and watching eyes. Sheikh Abdul is also very well-read, referring at one point to William James’s ideas about community, later to the US civil war and The Cold War.

He refers to “dreamland,” describing it as the community he is always teaching about and reaching for…a place where the values of acceptance and peace are primary. At one point during the interview, Sheikh Abdul excuses himself for a scheduled injection, explaining it’s part of his ongoing medical treatment. Due to the beatings while in prison, he sustained nerve damage in his back and cannot feel his legs at times.

Because his story is so powerful and the Sheikh so articulate, his story is best told in his own words, with few interruptions or interpretations.

I am Sheikh Abdul Kareem Abdul Razaq Abdul Kadher. I welcome you and let me just say first that I wish this visit won’t be like two passengers who meet in a station and then each leaves in their own direction. Though you are an American Christian and I am an Iraqi Muslim, I wish, we wish, through our good relationship to be like brothers and sisters in humanity. Even if we are of different color, different religions, let us be like brothers and sisters in humanity, having a place in dreamland.

I’m always telling my son to take 2-3 sandwiches with him to school to share them with whoever sits next to him, no matter if they are Sunni, Shi'a or Christian. I tell him, ‘Call that person your brother.’ When my son came now and told me we have guests, I told him that they are not guests, they are like your aunts and uncles.

Just like when you plant seeds in the ground, this is how we plant the seeds of love in our children. You may ask me anything you like.


Thank you. You’ve been arrested and detained. When and by whom?

I’ve been arrested twice, the first was on 7 Oct 2003 by the Americans. I was kept in the “cell of democracy.” (The name he gave the cell.)

I was first taken to one of Saddam’s former palaces, which is nearby the Second Circle. Later I was taken to a place called the 5th Department of the Military Intelligence, in Khadhimiyah neighborhood. This is now under control of the Americans. This is where I was tortured.

Maybe you have the question why were you detained and what were the things you asked the people to do through your khutbah on the menber (the platform from which a sheikh speaks).

Since the beginning, I have called on the people to resist the invasion and the occupation. This is a legal right for us and for all people. The same is for you. If your country was occupied, maybe you would be the first istshadiya (someone who gives their life for their country) just for the love of your country. [From the point of view of an Iraqi] this is the greatest kind of love, when someone gives their life for their country.

Because I am the Sheikh and Imam of this mosque, the Americans asked me to do many things I considered blackmail. Since the beginning I have been asking the people to resist the occupation in non-violent ways, yet to fight if they were called to do so. In the meantime, I have also told the people to protect anyone who is innocent—for example, journalists and the Iraqi military and police who are protecting the people. But, the situation became more difficult, it became more difficult to separate the good from the bad. At that time I asked the people to fight the occupiers and anyone who is helping them.

My friend (he points to our mutual friend sitting close by) knows very well that the American humvees surrounded our mosque many times and told me, “Either you shut your mouth or you can cooperate with us and we will make you part of this national association” (the inner circle of Iraqis, mostly exiles, who later became part of the Parliament).

Regularly, their Iraqi translator, whose face was covered, came over to give me the same message. For example, they told me the officer would give us a generator, a car I can use, and so forth. They gave me these offers because at this mosque there are more than 3,000 people coming to pray each Friday.

For me, as Imam, I wish these 3,000 people, when they finish their prayers, will go out and resist the occupation. Because of these offers from the Americans, I see the eyes of my wife and children will follow me everywhere asking, am I going to sell my country or not?

My religion tells me I must ask the people to resist the occupation. An occupier has come to take our country, they have lied, they have said they were bringing democracy, they have killed our children and raped our women and they have made a funeral in each house. It’s a very long story that would take days to tell, but I will tell you a small part of it.

I refused everything the Americans offered to me. One day a friend came to me and told me he heard I will be detained that day. I swear by God each word I’m telling you is true. A couple hours before I was arrested, the Iraqi translator who was a spy for them, came to my house with the Americans in their humvees. He pointed it out and told them this was where I lived. I was looking at them through the window. That was between 1 and 2pm.

For twenty years I am an Imam and have the asked the people to stand and not run away. I even told asked them to resist Saddam during his time. How can I ask the people to do this if I were to run away myself at this moment?

The Americans came back at 1am. My wife was praying at that time. They used a sound bomb to enter. I have a problem with my heart—arterial sclerosis—and take nitroglycerin medication for it. It is made worse under stress. I had, in fact, an appointment in a week for surgery for this heart condition.

My wife was screaming that the Americans were attacking us. Because I can speak some English, I went out to talk with them quietly to tell them I would go with them. Instead, they decided to show their ugly side. They started beating me in front of my wife and children. They threw me on the ground and about 20 soldiers piled on top of me. Then they drug me to the curb and made me sit down. They beat me so strongly, my heart trouble began and I needed my medication. An Iraqi female translator came up and began hitting my wife, saying very bad things to her.

You can’t imagine how silly they are. The soldiers told me, “We care about your health and must taste this medicine to make sure it’s not drugs, like heroin or something.” I told them, “It’s funny that you should ask me, an Imam and Sheikh of a mosque and who teaches the children and people about the Koran and the right way to live, and you, an American whose country is filled with these things, am I taking drugs?”

They hit my son Mohamed while he was sleeping. He sleeps heavily, and he thought it was his sister waking him up. When he woke he saw a tall, dark man with a helmet and gun, he was terrified. He was about 8 years old at the time. Even now, after we’ve moved to Amman, he still has some emotional problems. For example, he has taken the screws that are used in construction and tried to make holes in the walls and told me: Don’t worry, dad, we can run away and escape through these holes. If you were to call him into the room and ask him about these things, he would begin crying even now.

They threw the holy Koran and other religious books on the ground, they destroyed the furniture, and they stole the money that the people of the mosque have entrusted to me. Baghdadis have a tradition to leave their money with someone they trust. For example, some people save it for the Hajj (a pilgrimage to Mecca which a Muslim ought make at least once in their life), others who are wealthy and will give their money to the poor at the end of the year, they will keep it with the sheik as well.

They handcuffed me and shackled my feet and took me in one of the humvees. They took me to the “darkness palace.” I call it this because I heard women and children screaming in this place.

I was very careful with my answers when they interrogated me. They beat me and then put me in a 4-wheel –drive car with darkened windows and a bag over my head. They accused me of having a bomb in the mosque and when the interrogator asked me who are the people who placed it there, I told them, there is no bomb in the mosque. I told him, “Even if I didn’t care about all the people who are praying there, do you think I wouldn’t care about my four children who always play inside the yard of the mosque?”

The translator, who unfortunately I have to say was an Iraqi, is a traitor….just like you had traitors and spies in your country during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, we have our traitors too. The Iraqi translator told the Americans I am a liar. He thinks I cannot understand English. Then the Americans said they would leave him with me, to force me to answer any question. I still had the bag on my head. The translator started beating me so severely that I was bleeding from my eyes and nose. I was still handcuffed and my feet shackled. Then he began choking me. I told him I couldn’t breathe. I told him that I had a problem with my heart, that all but one of my valves were blocked. He told me he would block the last. Then he hit me very powerfully on my heart and I passed out.

When I woke, I was in an American military hospital. I have to say everything about the Americans, the good and the bad and in this hospital I met the kind Americans. One of the female doctors who helped me with the medical treatment was so kind that it gave me another impression about the Americans. I’ve mentioned this with other journalists who’ve also interviewed me. She even cleaned the pan in which I’ve had to urinate and she gave me my medication. I wish I could meet her someday to return the kind way in which she treated me.

When I eventually returned to the mosque, I even mentioned this during my Friday khutbah…but I hope you won’t use this to write only about how nice the Americans are.

Every time I’ve been beaten and tortured by the Americans, they told me to say how great Bush is and how I like him; they were filming me and taking pictures.


Sheikh Abdul pauses, as he will a few more times during the interview, to talk about the importance of honesty in all relations. Dishonesty, he believes, is the reason for war. Now, he says, it is not just Allah, but “even Jesus Christ [who] said you must tell the whole truth or you will feel shame in front of God,” before continuing with what happened.

At the 5th Department they were detaining women and men both.

They tortured me for seven days. While I would pray and was in the kneeling position, they kicked me very hard in the back. Before we pray, we wash ourselves and while I was doing this they put an electric stick into the water which gave me an electrical shock and I fell again on my back. Other things they did for example, they would bring a knife and cut holes in my dishdasha, threatening me, saying the next time the knife would be on my body. When I would use the toilet, which is a hole in the floor and was very dirty and blocked up, they would push the door open very hard and make us fall into the shit. They would also play loud music every night [to prevent us from sleeping].

Every night I was beaten by a soldier. I would be bloody and bruised and then they would make me stand against a wall and film me, telling me to say, “I love Bush,” and that I should smile because, “we are the greatest power in the whole world. You are only coolies, you are standing in front of the greatest power in the world.” I told him: I am not a ‘coolie’. I have even read William James who told his son how he should act within his community, ‘when you knock on the door, do it gently so you don’t disturb the neighbors.’

There was a soldier who brought all the other prisoners, telling me, this is your leader, and this is when he would start beating me. I was handcuffed during this time. He would tell me I should cry, but I would not, because I don’t want these people to feel weakened by their sheikh not being strong. Thanks to God, I no longer felt it when he would beat me.


Stopping, Sheikh Abdul looks, unwavering, into my eyes, “I just want to ask you if you are going to write all the truth or will you be like the others who are just doing ‘show business?”’ He tells me he’s given a couple of hours each to almost a dozen American reporters who then distilled his story down to a couple of lines. One, he says, was from Time Magazine. He calls these the “dishonest journalists.” This is why he at first denied our interview. When I assure him that’s not my intention, he continues.

For four days, I was hearing a young Iraqi women screaming continuously. “I am a virgin! I swear that no one has touched me before! I am from a religious family! Please don’t do these things to me!” When I remember this, it makes me feel very sad inside. I couldn’t hear her voice on the fifth day, only a moaning. Her voice still haunts me, it follows me everywhere.

My cell was about one and a half meters square. I was nearly dying, so I would just read the holy Koran. Every night a female and male soldier would come to the cell and make sexual moves in front of me. When the woman asked me what I thought about it, my answer was I would cry and cry. Because I speak English a bit, I told her, “Because I have lived my life with honor, I want to meet my God with honor.”

Under the name of democracy and human rights, the United States has destroyed our country. But they didn’t find anything of the weapons of mass destruction, for which they invaded our country. With sadness, I want to tell you, soon there will be a new weapon of mass destruction that will destroy the United States if they won’t awaken to the danger they are making, which is the hatred of the international community. This new group of ‘Nazis’ coming into the world now is saying we should reduce the number of Americans in the world. This is the worst weapon. This is more dangerous than the WMD.

I can give you an example: my little boy, who you’ve just seen, used to be busy with drawing butterflies and listening to music. He was a soft boy. After seeing what has been done to his father, arrested twice and beaten in front of him, you know what he told me? He asked me to buy him a heavy machine gun because he wants to be a sniper. Who made this terrorism? Who made my son [want to be] a terrorist?

On the seventh and eighth days of my detention, 10,000 people protested in many places in Baghdad. They went in front of the military base in Al-Yarmouk and demanded my release. This is the reason I was released after a week.

Perhaps you will say this was a very short time. Yet, when I would have a problem with my heart, I would knock on the bars of my cell to ask for my medication. When the soldier would bring the medication, he told me he would play a basketball game with me and would tell me to open my mouth. He was about three meters away and he would throw the pills to me. The cell floor was very, very dirty but because I was in so much pain, I didn’t care if they were dirty and would take them anyway.

I do have American friends before and after the invasion and they’ve told me they disagree about the war and are shocked by what the Americans are doing in Iraq.

The day before my release, a soldier came to me and said, “I need to tell you some bad news, but I know you are a Muslim so you will be patient, because you want to be in Paradise. The day we detained you, your son was following our convoy. One of the humvees hit him and he died.”

You know what they did was very sad. [When they took me] my son was pulling my hand on one side while the soldier was pulling me from the other.

I will tell you a short story. There is a soldier named Garner, who was responsible for the Yarmouk neighborhood. After I was released he came over and apologized, telling me they had arrested the wrong person. He told me they brought some gifts for me, some juice and milk. I didn’t receive it, letting the children take it instead.

This officer said, “I’m going to tell you good news. I will be going home soon. For me this nightmare will be over soon. “I told him he should tell the truth to people back in America.

He was a decent person and tried to do his best in our neighborhood, making relationships with the people. As Garner prepared to leave in his humvee, I told him, “Your driver hit my son’s cat and killed her, my son was very upset and was crying.”

Garner became very upset toward his driver, pushing him and saying, “What? You are a criminal!” I thought, oh-my-god, these people are going to destroy themselves with this schizophrenia. I said, “You kill us, you rape the girls in our country, you invaded our country and occupy it because of the weapons of mass destruction which you haven’t found, yet you care so much about this cat. I’m sorry to say this, but you are a strange people to us.”

On the following Friday through my speech I condemned the occupation and called for jihad (literally, “struggle” or “exerted effort,” jihad means a range of activities, from the struggle for self-improvement, to the struggle to stand against oppression), asking them to end the occupation. I still had the bruises on my face from being tortured. I asked the people to resist the occupiers, but I asked them always to do this without hurting any journalists or other civilians.

I continued asking the people to resist the occupation and I talked about the Abu Ghraib scandal. I continued to do this until 10 May 2005. This is the day that Al-Karar Brigade from the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior came.

One to two weeks before a friend had come over and warned me I should leave the country, that I might be detained by the government. I had this feeling as well. The Americans knew very well they couldn’t arrest me again because of the number of people from the mosque who would be against them. This is not because I am their leader, it is because I love them and they love me very much.

They raided the mosque and broke everything inside, the furniture of the mosque and of the orphan’s association. When they raided the mosque, it was the fourth prayer, at sunset (the most populous prayer). They began beating the old men looking for me. A few weeks before I had had my surgery. When they asked for the Sheikh, I told them I was him. They raided my house at the same time, stealing things from it. My wife was hiding herself and my daughters, guarding them like a mother hen and her chicks.

I feel sad to say this truth because it might be good for the American side to hear something like this, but this Iraqi said to my wife, “The power is for the Shi’a now and soon there won’t be any Sunni alive here.”

There were about 300 detainees; 150 in each room, about 6 by 6 meters, sleeping like sardines on top of one another. It was a horrible way of torturing. For every 20 prisoners they gave us a liter and half of water.


Were they mostly Baathists?

No. But, they were mostly Sunni; we can recognise that from the family names. They were especially from the well-known families, professors in the university, sheikhs, and pilots in the ex-Iraqi air force, especially those who were bombing Kharej Island.*

An officer, Major Mohammed from the Minister of Interior dropped sulfuric acid on my foot and other sensitive areas.

Sulfuric acid will burn through and dissolve almost anything, but especially skin. Numerous eyewitness survivors have claimed the Ministry of the Interior is using sulfuric acid on detainees. Sheikh Abdul declined to say where else they used it on him.

They beat me on my back with metal bars and other types of tools. Two young men [who had been beaten] died in front in me. After they beat me, I felt as if I was in a coma and fell to the ground. I was still blindfolded, but could see a bit. I could see a young man lying on the ground. They had forced him to sit on a broken bottle and his bowels were hanging out of his ass. I could see blood clots from him and some of his nails and his teeth were lying on the ground. I smelled a horrible smell of burned flesh from the electricity they had used on him. He had amnesia at this point. This young boy was about 16 years old.

On the tenth day, I found myself in the hospital. I realised they had put some ink on my fingers and that they had made me to stamp some papers. They told me [while in the hospital] they received orders that three to four percent should die when they are in detention.


“’Should’ die?” I ask Aishya, who is translating. “Not, it’s ok this many ‘might’ die, but ‘should’ die?” She repeats my question to Sheikh Abdul and answers, “yes, he says ‘should’ die.”

For three to four of the detainees who died, I performed the [death] rites. Most of them were students at the university. One of the stories is of a young man who’s from Al-Dora district, the Al-Sahaq Quarter—his name was Wissam. He was the only son of a family with five daughters and he was a student at the Technology University. He went to a shop next to the university to copy some papers, which was then raided. He was detained, along with all the other students in the copy shop. They beat him a lot, especially in the kidneys. This caused severe bleeding, especially from his rectum and his ears.

Most of these prisoners know me from religious programs on the TV or they come to pray at my mosque, so they came to me for help. I tried to help these people.

Wissam told me his mother loved him very much, and he asked me, “What would my mother do if she knew I was this sick?” The poor boy didn’t even know he was going to die. He told me he had a high fever in his chest and in his body. I told him to say, “La ilah ila Allah, Mohammed rassoul, Allah” which means, there is no god, just Allah, and Mohammed is the prophet of Allah. (Said before a Muslim dies.)

I felt happy he said these words because as a Muslim this is a good thing. Unfortunately, as he spoke his breathing began to falter and his eyes began to roll up, and his tongue fell out of his mouth. Just before he died I turned him in the direction of Mecca.

When [the guards] knew I did these things for the boy, four of them came and began beating me with a thick cable (like those used on outside electrical lines). Afterwards, they took the body of this boy and dropped him in the garbage, right in front of us. God witness what I’m saying to you, I’ve seen the bloodiest form of torture, worse than anything I’ve ever read of in the past.

Of course, this is under the orders of the US military. They are in a very bad situation in Iraq right now.

Instead of them coming for reconstruction for the bridges, they are creating a terrible enemy who will never forget what is being done to the people. Someday will come, if you and I are alive, the shame that will follow the United States will be huge. You will see what will happen. They should bring their troops home.

We are facing a huge problem now, one that has been created by Bush and by the occupation. We are facing the problem now that [some Muslims say] each white person with blond hair and blue eyes should be killed. This is the sort of reaction that is created by Bush, not just in Iraq, but in most of the counties.

This has made us feel very, very sad. Because from these female and male blond people we have close friends—[Muslims] can’t say that everyone is bad, this is not part of our belief. This is what makes us sad. We have friends from the United States, from Italy and other places. When we see each other we cry because we care for each other this much. It’s a humanitarian brotherhood we feel between us.

I find it really strange how the people can cooperate with your president; I will give you an example. In each speech of Bush there is a black dog always with him. It is a big symbol for us that whatever happens in the world he doesn’t care, this dog is the most important thing for him.

Bush always tries to deny the truth. For example he has already lost the war, but he’s always talking about victory. He is always telling people the opposite of the truth.

For example, one month after the invasion, Bush said, “We won the battle” but after that every time we see him on the TV he’s now saying, “It’s a hard battle, it will take awhile” and so on. He’s always talking about terrorism, and the global terrorism, and “we must finish this terrorism in the world” and it should be done by the Americans.

Because of my beatings [while in detention], I have some very serious problems with my spinal cord, with one disc in particular, but it is inoperable. Now, I cannot pray normally, but must sit a chair. For many months I’ve been in Amman receiving medical treatment. It’s very expensive for the medical treatment and to stay here, and it is very hard to cover these expenses. And , it’s not only me, there are tens of thousands of Iraqis like me in the same situation.

Many, many families have been forced to leave our country for various reasons. Now for example, there is just one female American journalist who was kidnapped and they have made this a very big issue, even including me. I am one of those who asked for [Jill Carroll’s] release. Yet, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are being forced to leave their country. Who cares about them?

In fact, I’m against September 11, which happened in the United States, and also against the bombings that have happened in London, and Madrid. I have condemned these things. But, let me tell you, if we test our blood, me, as an Iraqi Muslim, you, as an American Christian, there will be no difference between us. So, why have [Americans] made this big difference between us? Is your blood mixed with honey? All of us are equal.

I want to get the truth to the American people. I tried myself to go to the United States, to make a bridge, to tell the American people the truth of what is going on in Iraq, yet they didn’t even allow me to enter the American Embassy. I wrote in the application this reason for my desire to visit the United States. They made me wait a couple hours outside the embassy and then all they told me was to go home.

I know my position very well. In Baghdad there are two sides of the river, Kurf and Safa. I can move the people on both sides [by my words]. Yet, the only thing I will say to the people is to make something of peace. If I come, I will come as a guest to your country, not with a bomb. I will ask the Americans to forgive and forget about everything, and I will ask the same of the Islamic world. I was shown on al-Jazeera (meaning that millions have seen it) and I said our problem is with the occupation, not with the innocent people. I said it’s unacceptable to make bombs against the States; they love their children as we love our children. We have to protect both communities. We have to separate Bush’s administration from the American people. We should build a new relationship because there are good American people. We should recognise this difference.

Excuse me for these words, but maybe the cold weather in Europe made [the American’s] emotions like this. Is it true, as we’ve seen in movies, that you have emotions and that you cry? Is it true that you cry when a little girl is killed in a car accident? What would happen if a school bus full of children has an accident and all are killed? How will you feel? How do feel about a school bus of children shot at by US troops, in which 40 were killed?

Excuse me for this, but I want to ask you personally, will you go back to your hotel and turn the switch off or will you remember the woman I told you about who was raped in front of me? Will you remember my little son who pulled my hand as the Americans were pulling me away from my house by the other? Will you remember my son who still has emotional problems from these events? Will you remember the 20 years of pictures and a lifetime together with my wife and I which was destroyed in one moment?

And please don’t forget this young man that I told you about who died in front of me. I wish you would remember Wissam’s mother. She is now crazy and wanders the street, stopping in front of each shop and saying, “Wissam will come out of this one.” What are you going to feel if someone is close to your heart and this has happened to him?

Under the name of democracy and human rights, the United States has destroyed our country to look for these weapons of mass destruction. So, should every country should be searched for nuclear weapons, except this spoiled little girl called Israel? We would love to live in a world where there is no such weapon, but Israel should be included in this plan. It should be a law for everyone.

My door is open to everybody. I will always say in front of everyone that I’ve seen your tears falling down from your eyes as I’ve told these stories. Maybe through your honest way of talking, you will move the emotion of the American people and they will wake up, to save your people and to save your children. This is the first time for me that I’ve seen an American crying, I’ve met with five men and six women and you are the only American journalist who has cried. Are you really an American?

We are suffering a lot from the American occupation and the American Army. I swear to God that I’ve seen, during the invasion, in front of Al-Yarmouk Hospital Americans attack an ambulance with a tank that had a pregnant woman inside. I’ve seen it; the baby from the dead woman was even completely burned.


Aishya tells the Sheikh there were actually two pregnant women inside. She knows, she says, because she has spoken with the husband of one of them, and the sister of the other, both of whom were in the ambulance and survived. The husband lost both legs and one of his eyes. A court case, filed in Brussels against Donald Rumsfeld, was dismissed. Sheikh Abdul bows his head and silently cries as he listens. He resumes slowly, by saying:

What has made our world like a volcano that may explode any minute? It’s because of this dishonesty and dishonor.

We feel sad about the people who died in Katrina and also what’s happened with Hurricane Rita. And I don’t say this because you are an American sitting in front of me, we feel sad for any people.

Without his mosque, the Sheikh says he has searched for another way to be of service to people.

I even sent a letter to the British Embassy [in Amman] since coming here, to tell them I want ed to be a volunteer with any disaster that may happen in the world. Their reply was they didn’t allow me to enter the embassy and second they called me a terrorist.

My God, my religion, my prophet order me, even if you sit with me here for one minute, there is a type of law that you are under my protection. I should consider you as a sister. I shouldn’t look at you in a bad way like other men. I should be honest even in the way I look at you. I should offer you help if you need it. Any sort of help, financial, and so on. Yet, this is the opposite view of how the American military describes Muslims. You will see what will happen in the world because of the United States has broken the peace bridge between countries in the world. We will not be able to live in peace any longer.

I would love to make a dreamland. We should, through our relations as brothers and sisters, move far away from the relationships of vampires like Bush and Saddam, and make a city of peace.

A man came to Jesus Christ and told him of another that was hurting him. A friend of Jesus Christ’s was sitting close by and said you should ask God for help. Of course in our religion, we are taught to love and honor all the prophets, including Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ corrected the man and said, “Yes, ask God for help, but you must also work for it.” If we, all of us, me, you, all of us, be honest with each other and don’t lie, our dream [of peace] will be realised.


* Kharej Island, which belongs to Iran, sits in the Gulf Coast. It was bombed by the Iraqi Air Force during the eight-year war between the two countries. Others who’ve been assassinated by the Badr Brigade have had written on their homes: This is the end of all those bombed Kharej Island.

IMF in Iraq: The Second Invasion

by Karen Button

“IMF dirty MF
Takes away everything it can get
Always making certain that there's one thing left
Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt
And they call it democracy”

- Bruce Cockburn, singer/songwriter
Call it Democracy, 1985

Last December the US-backed Iraqi government agreed to a $685 million loan from the International Monetary Fund, and effectively sold their country down the river called economic slavery—the master being the Free Market Economy.

They will have a lot of company. Many of the world’s so-called third world and developing nations are already on that river, barely afloat. Most of Latin America has been under the thumb of the IMF’s brutal austerity programs for decades, though certain countries, most notably Venezuela and Bolivia, who are nationalizing their resources, are testament to the pervasive undercurrent of socialist ideals.

For Iraq though, the journey has just begun.

That $685 million loan came with a heavy price tag: end oil subsidies and open Iraq’s economy to the free market. In other words, dismantle any form of socialised society and make it a commodity.

Just days after Iraq’s constitutional election gave oil companies their first taste of Iraqi crude by requiring all unexplored fields be open to the highest bidder, Prime Minister Al-Jaafari implemented the first of the IMF policies, cutting fuel subsidies. Nearly overnight fuel prices rose nine-fold. Now, five months later, a canister of gas costs about $14 USD in a country where the average monthly income is maybe $200 USD.

Defending the cuts, IMF representative Bill Murray told the Cox News Service that Iraq had to “come up with budgetary resources to finance health care, education and other important public services”. He failed to mention that Iraq once provided free health care to 93 per cent of its population with its oil revenues and also had the highest literacy rate in the Middle East.

Now, even though the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs reported in January that poverty among Iraqis had risen by 30 per cent since the US-led invasion, the government is bravely marching toward the free market.

At the end of March, the Ministry of Trade, largely responsible for food distribution, announced that it would cancel several items from the long-instituted food ration program. According to figures from the trade ministry itself, nearly 26.5 (or 96 per cent) of Iraq’s 28 million people are dependent on the monthly ration.

During Saddam Hussein’s reign, 12 items were included in the rations. That’s now been cut to four essential items, including sugar, rice, flour and cooking oil.

The ministry is expecting to cut rations altogether, perhaps by the end of the year, according to the Ra'ad Hamza, a senior trade ministry official. "If you keep Iraq under socialist laws, the economy won't improve,” he said to the Integrated Regional Information Networks. “But we'll continue to provide the population with essential items at least until the end of the current year,”

Inflation, which has skyrocketed since the invasion, can be expected to continue unchecked with the IMF policies in place.

Baghdad University economist Omar Abdel Kareem, quoted by IRIN, stated, “Before this decision, prices on items such as vegetables and grains had already doubled in January. Since then, they've increased more than 20 percent a week."

With the elimination of some rations, the price of certain products has risen by as much as 300 per cent. “In 2002 lentil beans were sold for about US $0.50 per kilogramme. Since then, the retail price has jumped to around US $2 per kilogramme.”

With half of Iraq’s population under the age of 18, it will be the children who bear the brunt of these tried and failed IMF policies.

UNICEF reported earlier this month that 25 per cent of children in Iraq are now malnourished and underweight; a March 2005 report found that malnutrition had doubled since the US-led invasion. Expect those numbers to rise alongside the inflation rate.

But Mr. Murray is not looking at those indices; he will note, instead, that Iraq’s economy has grown by 10 per cent. By IMF standards, that’s success. The poverty, malnutrition, and inflation don’t count.

And they call it democracy.

Residents Charge Iranian Intelligence are Running Samawa

by Karen Button

Samawa, the capital of Al-Muthana’s southern governate, sits on the shores of the Euphrates River about 270 km (170 m) south of Baghdad. It is here where sources, too afraid to be identified in this article, charge that Iranian intelligence forces inside the Badr militia are running local government and that the provincial governor, Mohammed al-Hassaani, is in their back pocket.

These sources include a religious sheikh, a police officer, two journalists and several local residents, all too frightened to openly state their names, even though one of them now lives outside Iraq. They have good reason: many who have publicly decried the SCIRI-backed governor or its militia, the Badr Organisation, are now disappeared or dead—two of them killed just days ago.

At 9:30pm on the night of May 5, the bodies of Smaah Mohammed and his uncle were found dead in the streets of Samawa. According to residents, the two men had spoken out in the past about the Badr, accusing them of ongoing attacks against Japanese troops, whose base is nearby.

“They made a big scandal against Badr,” says one man from Samawa. “Afterwards Mr. Smaah was kidnapped by the Badr and taken to Samawa police prison. Mr. Smaah gave money to the Samawa police [for his release] and then he ran away to Syria three months ago.” Smaah Mohammed had returned just five days before his assassination, assured that the recent change in Iraq’s government meant everything in Samawa was under control.

“He is thinking everything is ok,” the man continues, “but after he come back the death forces and Badr organisation kill him in the street. His body was found like [an] execution, shooting by gun into his head.”

Both of the dead men were Shi’a and were the latest deaths in what is being called a campaign to “free” Samawa of its Sunni population and any others opposed to the Badr.

Peaceful Protests Lead to Crackdowns
Last August was a crucial time in Samawa. Fed up with water and electricity shortages, a crowd of about 1,000 demonstrators held a peaceful march against the local government. Security forces, at the order of governor al-Hassaani, fired on the crowd killing at least two people and injuring 45. At an emergency meeting the regional council voted to oust al-Hassaani, who then refused to leave. Though the Mahdi Army threatened to take over if the governor didn’t exit, SCIRI officials from Baghdad—facing their own crisis to finish writing the constitution--hurriedly gathered in Samawa and convinced them to back off.

Though Samawa had been relatively free from the street violence of other Iraqi cities, residents say that began to change once al-Hassaani was installed as SCIRI’s representative.

Al-Hassaani’s refusal to step down didn’t help much with public opinion. One local journalist, who asked to be called Marwan Muhammad, was subsequently arrested twice by Badr forces for his news reports and forced to flee the country for his own safety; he tells me Samawans have been kept in check by fear. Muhammad was fortunate, though the order to arrest him came directly from the governor, he was released because many of the police officers were old family friends from this tight-knit community. Muhammad recalls an international news conference later last year where governor al-Hassaani personally approached him and said, “Marwan, I will kill you in the future!”

Iranian Intelligence Forces Increase
Sources inside Samawa claim that 1,200 Iranian intelligence forces entered the city about six weeks ago, and are now purging lists kept by local security forces of those who have been opposed to Iraq’s occupation or to the Badr.

Another reporter smuggled out details of a meeting he attended at the end of March. Held in the Muthana Council offices, governor Mohammed al-Hassaani met with, among others, Sheikh Saeed Abed Al-Ameer Dhwaini, Muthana Council President; Sheikh Ali Al-Meyali, Manager of the Iraqi government’s local Shi’ite Office; and Sheikh Abed Allah Al-Shamery from the Imam Ali mosque. At the meeting it was decided there would be a campaign “for making south Iraq free from Al-Suna Group.” It was agreed the method would be to label Sunnis “terrorists” and security forces would either “capture him and kill him” or “make them to enter the prison.”

A similar attempt was made six months ago when posters signed by the governor himself began appearing around town. In them it was declared that on behalf of the Shi’ite Al-Hussain (the man killed many eons ago and the reason for the Shi’ite/Sunni split), the Sunnis were declared terrorists and they must be made to leave Samawa. “But,” said Muhammad, “many Samawa people from the Shi’a prevent that, and say if attack al-Suna, we will declare the war against Badr organization in Samawa. Al-Suna are 40% in Samawa and many people are married between Shi’ite and al-Suna.”

At the March meeting, no Sunni were invited. The man who smuggled out details and photographs is a Shi’a. One photo taken from the meeting show Council president Sheikh Dhwaini, Governor Hassaani, the Deputy Governor Raed Dhwaini (Sheikh Dhwaini’s nephew), and Sheikh Al-Hassan, leader of the tribe to which A-Hassaani belongs, all Shi’a, all seated together.

When asked about the picture, Muhammad immediately recognizes the attendees. “All of them are Badr,” he says. When I ask if he knows Sheikh Ali Al-Meyali, he replies, “yes, he is an Iranian intelligence operative.”

How can you be sure? I ask. "When I was arrested there were also five Iranians in the jail with me, but they were unafraid. When I asked them why they said Sheikh Ali Al-Meyali will come to get them. And he did, I saw him, and they didn't have to go to the court. Afterwards I asked many of my contacts in the police, ‘who is this sheikh,’ and they told me, ‘he is with the Iranian intelligence.’"

“Now, it has started; the operation has begun,” declared the source who attended the March meeting. This time though, not only Sunnis will be targeted, but also anyone else opposed to the Badr.

Recent deaths are enough to prove that.

Just a week prior to Smaah Mohammed’s execution, 33 year-old Hussein Ali Kadem and 29 year-old taxi driver Nazar Mohamed were both taken from their homes at 2am by Badr forces, according to a sheikh in the city whose help the families sought. The families had already been to the police station where they were told they didn’t know the where men’s whereabouts, that they were taken by a “top group [who are] working with Samawa governor.” Yet, when they questioned the governor’s office, they were told, “I don’t know about that and I don’t know this group.”

The sheikh was extremely nervous, afraid if his name were published in connection to these men, he would also be in danger. Such is the level of fear in Samawa. For good reason.

At 11pm four nights later, 42 year-old Safaa Jasem, a Shi’a and shop master from Samawa, was found dead in the streets of Al-Jumhuri neighborhood. According to witnesses Jasem’s body showed signs of torture and he had been shot in the head, the same execution-style killing as is common in Baghdad these days. Samawa police prevented media coverage of the killing and forbade residents from speaking about it, telling them it would only cause more problems, a source told me. “But,” if they are not hiding anything, he asked, “now Samawa police don’t like any peoples from Samawa talking about this criminal. Why?”

Samawa Police Not on Board
Not all police are comfortable with the plan, though. One officer from the Al-Huria police station says,” There are Samawa police which don’t like to help this group, but they are afraid from the Samawa governor to be killed if they are not cooperating.” He says they received orders to obtain information about Samawans to begin “the operation,” and that the command had come down the channel of command from the Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistany himself.

In fact, there are rumblings that local police, fed up with the Badr, may fight back. Leaflets being distributed throughout Samawa today say that 250 police officers were told to “go home,” that they were being replaced by Badr. Instead, the former police are threatening to declare war on the Badr.

When asked what the nearby international troops, from Australia, Britain and Japan, are doing about the situation, one the journalist Muhammad responded. “What are they going to do? These are Iraqi peoples, if they are killed or not this is a very ordinary thing; they don’t worry about that.” Besides, he says, indicating that the occupation by international troops means little in how Iraq’s politics play out on the local level, “only Samawa’s people know to be afraid about this declaration; it is them who will be killed or who will fight back.”

A Certain Peace Amidst a Campaign of Death

by Karen Button

Two weeks ago I received a harrowing account from a friend in the Adhamiya district of Baghdad. At 7:30 that morning there was shooting in the street and my friend opened the door to find out what was going on. Iraqi National Guard troops shouted at him to close the door immediately. Two seconds later, he told me, shots were fired through the door at head level. “I was shivering to see this hole in the door,” he said. “My wife nearly fainted. We kept indoors for eight hours and didn’t move.” Inside the house were also two of their children. “How is your wife?” I asked. “Praying,” he responded.

This is daily life for Iraqis, where when families say goodbye to each other in the morning, it could be goodbye for good. And Baghdad, where violence is the worst, the country’s most lethal location.

For the past year Baghdad’s morgue has received on average 50 bodies a day, many of them brutally tortured, almost none that have died from natural causes. Morgue staff reported to an Iraqi collegue the average is now over 85 and that they recently received 480 bodies in one day alone—the highest number still remains 1,100 in one day last July.

For months Sunnis in Iraq’s capital have charged there is a campaign of death against them and that Ministry of Interior forces are behind it. Iraqis commonly refer to the 6th floor of the ministry’s building as sites for these tortures, on-the-street knowledge that the government won’t admit to.

Just yesterday, the conservative Iraqi station Al-Sharqiya TV reported that Baghdad’s Al-Yarmouk Hospital received 65 bodies this week alone, 25 of them yesterday, and all without heads. Reuters is reporting “some” were beheaded.

In an interview with Muthana Al-Dhari, spokesperson for the Association of Muslim Scholars, I was told, “It’s not only about the 6th floor, there is the 10th floor as well. The information we get about it is from the witnesses who’ve seen what’s going on in the Ministry of Interior. Three of the people who work in the media department [of the AMS] have been tortured in the Ministry of Interior.”

In mid-February Dr. Faik Bakir, then director of Baghdad’s mosque, turned over a detailed report the UN documenting the number of dead received and the ways in which they died. According to Dr. Bakir, the morgue received over 10,000 bodies in 2005, up from the more than 8,000 in 2004 and 6,000 in 2003. He said almost all were “suspicious deaths,” citing the causes as violence and war-related rather than by natural causes. Many had been tortured terribly. Most disturbing, he also said 7,000 people had been killed in recent months by death squads.

Before the war, in 2002, Bakir said the morgue had recorded less than 3,000 suspicious deaths.

The 24,000 bodies were from the Baghdad area alone, and do not account for the number of bodies that never make it to the morgue, thrown instead, into garbage piles or ditches, nor for those who have disappeared.

Shortly after, on 22 February, Samara’s Golden Shrine, an important Shi’a mosque, was bombed. The ensuing sectarian violence has been largely blamed for the increase in violence and deaths. While true that sectarian violence has contributed significantly to the loss of life, Imams nationwide called for tolerance and the Iraqi people themselves showed a strong unity in the weeks following.

Dr. Bakir, threatened for his disclosures fled Iraq for his own safety at the end of February.

At least two questions remain: Who is doing the killing and who is promoting sectarian violence?

It was just after this, in March, that The Guardian quoted then outgoing head of the UN human rights office in Iraq, John Pace, “The Badr brigade [Sciri's armed wing] are in the police and are mainly the ones doing the killing. They're the most notorious." Sciri, the Shi’ite political party Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, is backed by Iran. Iraqis also charge that the Medhi Army, the armed militia of Shi’a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, is targeting and killing people and that they, too, are backed by Iran.

Two weeks ago Badr and Mehdi forces were seen operating alongside Iraqi Police in an attack on Adhamiya, a predominantly Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad. Fierce street battles between the IP and residents raged. One resident told me, “We’ve seen the Badr; they are trying to gain control of our neighborhood!”

It was during these clashes that my friend’s front door was blasted through by bullets.

Iraqis have charged for some time that Iranian intelligence forces are part of these militias and are operating inside the Ministry of Interior. Mainstream news sources such as Knight Ridder and Time Magazine have reported the same. But the Adhamiyans had their own proof when five of the 37 militia captured turned out to be Iranians. “They couldn’t even speak Arabic,” said one source I spoke with, and had munitions “unlike those used by the Iraqis.”

The men were taken to the Abu Hanifa mosque in Adhamiya, where high-level negotiations were held between Sunni Muslim groups and officials from the ministries of the interior and defense.

Residents, able to prove that Iranians were coming with the Iraqi Police, used the leverage to gain a five-point agreement in which the IP, interior ministry forces and all militias were forced to pull out of the district. Residents agreed to accept the presence of the Iraqi National Guard in certain areas, so long as they are working to defeat the death squads, but maintained the right to retaliate if they are seen to be working with any of the militias. Residents also agreed to reel in their own defense forces unless needed. Occupation forces were not included in the agreement; residents maintained their right to resist the occupation.

A similar agreement was drawn up six months ago, but this one has, for the most part, held for two weeks now.

When I asked my friend yesterday if the agreement was still holding he replied, “There are explosions everywhere in Baghdad, but not in Adhamiya."

Adhamiyans can now walk freely down the street, shops have re-opened, cars have appeared back on the road…though driving outside of Adhamiya is still as dangerous as ever and a desperate situation remains regards lack of water and electricity in a city where the temperature hovers daily around 100 degrees.

The irony, of course, is that the peace in Adhamiya is being maintained not because US troops and government security forces are present, but because they are gone.

Contributions to this article from Arkan Hamad in Baghdad.