Month of the Bombs

I was already awake the morning when I heard the bizzare sound of what I
could only describe as a jet speeding up and slowing down to break the
sound barrier multiple times, only I don’t think jets can do that. Or
thunder, which is unheard of this time of year. Within two hours, BBC
reported that it had actually been a multiple-rocket attack against the al
Rashid hotel, where Paul Wolfowitz was staying in Baghdad.

Since then, it has been a tragic Ramadan. Another day we were just
walking out the door when the force of another blast went ahead and opened
the door for us. It didn’t break, it just puffed open. We went up to the
roof and saw the black smoke rising. That was the Red Cross. The same
day, multiple police stations were targeted by car bombs. And then there
have been the nearly-nightly mortar attacks on the CPA across the river.
My skin is on edge, waiting for the next explosion. It’s very hard to
relax when your nervous system is instinctively fully charged.

I can now tell the difference between a regular bomb and a car bomb. A
car bomb is much more powerful, and has the distinctive ‘double-boom’: one
for the explosive itself, blowing open the car, and the other a
split-second before or after of the gas tank splitting open. It is also
much higher pitched than a regular bomb or mortar. I can also pick out
Iraqi gunfire, US gunfire, Iraqi mortars, US mortars--I don't count US
Apache helicopters or tank rounds because I was all too familiar with them
from before, living with them daily in Palestine.

There are so many groups carrying out these bombings, for so many reasons.
This is the reason I have waited to send this letter, because sorting
them all can be so complex. Part of unraveling the mess is to check our
Iraqi neighbors’ reactions to individual bombings. Those which are
carried out against the US military are, sadly, generally supported.
Responsibility for these attacks are claimed by the Iraqi resistance.
When we ask why they are carrying out these attacks, and why now, the
answer is always the same: Occupation, house raids, and dead children.
There is no justice and no democracy, now six and seven months after the
‘liberation.’ There is no security, either from the general post-war
chaos or from the brutal actions of our own US soldiers. They are not
Baathists, because they hated Saddam. And they are not foreigners.

I am sorry to report that. But that is what is said on every street and
in every house we visit.

Some Iraqis would like the US military to stay, if they would police the
streets and adhere to human rights and due process. Others want the US to
be gone immediately, and get the UN to replace them for the peacekeeping
functions. Others say, “Anything is still better than Saddam.” Others
say, “Even Saddam was better than this.”

The other bombings—of Iraqi schools and cultural landmarks, are pretty
unanimously opposed by Iraqis we speak to. The question is, who is
responsible for these? One leaflet passed out around Baghdad at the
beginning of Ramadan, claimed to be from the Ba’athists and threatened to
bomb every school and university over the first weekend. So most of our
friends and neighbors kept their children at home. But some of them told
us they didn’t think the bombs were from the Ba’athists. One said, “It
could be the Kuwaitis. We deprived them of a year of school when Saddam
invaded their country. Now I think they want to take revenge.”

Myself, I don’t know.

I have learned here that when you see a large group of people clustered
here, it can only be one of two things: either some office is handing out
benefit payments, or there is a funeral. Funerals here involve an
open-faced coffin wrapped in a blanket. [Palestinians do not use coffins.
They use a platform instead]. Someone mounts the casket onto the roof
rack of their car, and all the male relatives and neighbors follow in
procession to the burial field. The women gather in the house of the
deceased and weep together. I know this because in the last little while
I have been to far too many funerals.

Our team has a friend who has received one of the postwar reconstruction
sub-contracts. He is supposed to provide meals for two thousand prisoners
at one of the prisons in Baghdad. To do this, he has a $3,000 budget per
day. If everything is going well, he can make a small profit.
Unfortunately, with power outages and water shortages, things don’t go so
well too often. Right now, he’s losing money. Trouble is, he’s
subcontracted from a Qatari company which receives $4,000 per day just for
hiring him to do the job. Trouble is, the Qataris are subcontracted from
a US firm, Halliburton (its local subsidiary here is KBR) or Bechtel,
which pockets the rest of the contract at nearly $10,000 per day. Just
who exactly is being aided by our aid programs?

At the CPA, 6,000 US military and civilian staffers must be fed each day.
The cost of providing a Western-style meal (hamburgers, fries, onion
rings, potato chips, alternate entrée, soup bar, salad bar, soda fountain,
coffee, tea, and dessert, plus two cans Coke) is $20,000US per day. KBR
holds the contract and has subcontracted it to another Iraqi company.
What the contract bid was actually for above that I don’t know. Another
Iraqi friend said to us, “if we were only allowed to use local workers for
these positions, rather than housing Americans, more people would be
working [and those who are newly unemployed are mostly government office
workers] and they would have no need to be fed. They would just go home
at the end of the day.” US military and civilian staff are all salaried
on a US pay scale in addition to being fed, and the costs are counted as
reconstruction.

And so goes $20 billion. At most, only 1/4 of it is likely to reach the
Iraqi people.

The rains are here

The rains are here.
The smell of wet dust is in the air, permeating the house. It is not
unpleasant.
The winds are here
And the dust storms.
Did I ever think Arabia capable of monsoons?

The winter here is its own kind of spring. The true colors of buildings
begin to emerge, especially the vivid tiles of the domed mosques, from
their thick dusty brown crusts. It looks a little more like Easter every
day, as many of the domes are egg-shaped rather than the half-spheres of
Palestine. In the meantime, we can be blown off the roof in a damp wind
if we are not careful. Since we are along the Tigris, the wind is
stronger. I have high hopes that it will sweep away the mosquitoes as
well, which are beginning to spawn in earnest in the moist air.

Most of our friends and neighbors are dressed in winter jackets over
sweaters over thick shirts. They look at us as if we are crazy. We are
still in shirtsleeves by day, but some of us are pulling out sweaters and
blankets at night. The temps are probably in the high 60’s now.

I apologize for not having written for so long. It’s been quite
overwhelming here—both in terms of how busy we are and the emotional toll
of witnessing the suffering of Iraqi people under both the old
dictatorship and the new. I say that because everyone here knows who is
really in charge. As a firm believer in nonviolence, I never want to say
that violenceBut after this month of blood and the sudden promises of
Iraqi independence by June, I am not so sure.

Life these days is punctuated with helicopters, tanks, Humvees, and car
bombs and explosions. All of us here are a little jumpy at the slam of a
car door outside. Several weeks ago now, Humvees came down our street and
fully-armored soldiers went door to door registering all the people in the
houses. They came to our building also, and were shocked to see
foreigners living outside a heavily guarded compound, among the people.
They wanted to know how many people lived in our building, and especially
how many foreigners were inside. They registered our building on their
GPS device, and went on down the street. Our neighbors realized then that
we, too, could be harrassed. The military then began regular ‘patrols’ of
our street several times during the day or night. In addition, we noticed
several helicopter patrols hovering low over our building at different
times of day. Since fraternization or association with the US military is
grounds for militant groups targeting NGOs—the UN and Red Cross already
suffering heavily for this—we were feeling less than grateful for their
‘security’ presence. In addition to certainly feeling no more secure with
these tanks ‘patrolling’ down our street at two in the morning and waking
all the neighbors, we certainly were feeling no more rested at night.

I am finally, two months into my stay in postwar Iraq, getting to feel as
though this is a regular team. Everyone is up to speed and pulling
together. I am delighted to be free of the role of team coordinator.
Trying to keep everything moving at the same time as training four new
team members and learning a new environment and trying to referee a
particularly difficult team conflict had completely worn me out. Uff-da!
I dumped the role off on Cliff the second he walked in the door. I’ll
have to pick it up again while he leads the delegation, but that will be
alright for just ten days. In the meantime, I’m working to coordinate our
growing ‘Campaign for Justice for Iraqi Detainees.’ I will send the
releases to you all shortly. This will keep me (and the whole team!) more
than busy, I think, until I head over to Palestine for Christmas and back
home for January. My only regret is that our team should really be
stirring things up on a daily basis here just at the time that I have to
leave here.

I’ve made a few friends here beyond all the families we work with who have
relatives in the US prison camps. One is Katrina, a woman who began
approaching us on the sidewalks saying, “Lisa, Lisa,” She was friends
with Lisa from our team who was here over the summer. She and several
other families are squatting in an unfinished shopping center. Katrina
and her young son live in a small shop and keep most of their belongings
under a set of stairs. She is a widow, and her older children are away
and married. Fortunately, there is a small bathroom in the shop which
provides water for cooking, though some days when the water goes out, they
get it from a tap out on the street. When there is electricity, they cook
on a small electric-coil hot plate. Both times I’ve been in her home so
far, she has made me eat. She also takes pride in sending me home with
small gifts tucked in my purse or pockets—gum, candy, a bar of soap. Last
time she gave me a t-shirt. She even painted my nails. The currency of
friendship in Iraq is the exchange of small gifts, often in slightly
sacrificial acts. Katrina is Chaldean Christian. She looks quite
Kurdish, but I won’t say that to her. Ethnic tensions are running high,
and the Chaldeans don’t want to be associated with either the Kurds or the
Iraqi Arabs. Katrina is the boss around the shopping center, and proudly
has all the men wrapped around her finger. She’s hollered at each of
them until they came in and introduced themselves properly or done her
some favor (I especially enjoyed seeing the man who opened her tiny can of
tomato sauce with a large knife. She rewarded him with a box of matches
so he could light his cigarettes.) She has an unconquerable spirit and
zest for life.

Mariam is an Assyrian Christian woman with a four-year-old daughter and a
baby. She lives at the end of our street in a third-floor apartment. When
I first visited her, she had MTV on in the background, where an American
woman was pole-dancing in skimpy underthings. We were both trying to
ignore it without much success. Finally, after much other small talk, she
asked me if all American women dressed like that and acted like that. I
said no, only a very few do that or dress like that. She accepted this
and then said, “It is not flattering and it is not beautiful.” Over the
past three years I have come to learn that 90% of the known world has seen
Baywatch, and this is their primary cultural encounter with Americans.

I am writing so much here and sending so little. I have started three
letters explaining some of the issues here and they are still waiting to
be completed. In the meantime, I'll continue to send the reports I've
been writing for the project. In some ways, there's really no more to
say.

It is my day off once again, and I find that days off are often days where
my body decides it's okay to be ill. Fortunately, I did get to sleep in
today. Now I'll return home to try finishing those letters, write an
article, and try to stay sane while things go boom and helicopters fall
out of the air.

peace,

Le Anne

Duluhaya: Destruction and Dignity

Duluhaya: Destruction and Dignity

by Le Anne Clausen

Recently, CPT members Anne Montgomery and myself, and visitors Peter and
Meg Lumsdaine traveled north from Baghdad to the village of Duluhaya to
document human rights abuses by the US military. Duluhaya is a small
agricultural village just south of Samarra, in the ‘Sunni Triangle’ of
Iraq.

On the road, traffic was blocked for hours due to the ambush of a US
military Humvee. A sergeant blocking traffic one-half kilometer from the
ambush told us that Iraqi insurgents attacked the vehicle with an
improvised explosive device (IED) and a gunman firing an AK-47 after the
blast. He also said the soldiers inside the Humvee were very badly
wounded. However, something seemed awry: the Humvee was part of a
20-vehicle military convoy heading north along the road. There was
immediate availability of communications, but it was taking an unusually
long amount of time for a helicopter to arrive to transport the wounded.
I realized what this meant: the soldiers were likely already dead.

We next visited a farm near the village, which had been hit by US shelling
on September 29th. The 30kg shell destroyed a support pillar at the
corner of the house, as well as a one-square-meter area of the patio on
which it landed and shattered several windows. The shell hit the house at
10pm, when most of the family was inside the home. The family reported
that US forces had shelled the area nightly for the past three months.
The father of the home, who is a sheikh in the village, met with US forces
to ask them not to fight in civilian-occupied areas. “Every evening they
bomb my gardens,” he said. “We don’t need this; we need freedom and
electricity.”

The family members also took us to document walls around the village,
dozens of which had been bulldozed by US forces. “Any graffiti that
opposes the US military’s presence, they bulldoze the wall,” said one
relative. “They could use paint if they wanted to, but they want to teach
a lesson.” On one such wall, which fronted the village’s school building,
someone had written, “This is Democracy?”

Next we traveled to a large date palm grove which had been completely
clear-cut by the US military. The military said it was necessary to do
this because an insurgent fired upon US troops from the grove. Over 1,000
trees and two houses were destroyed in the process. Eighty families
nearby depended on the income from this grove. Date palms must grow for
fifteen years before they are able to bear fruit.

Our final stop for the day was a funeral. Men were lined up in mourners’
tents outside in a dusty field, while crowds of black-clad women filled
the house. We met the family of the man who had been killed by US forces
during a raid of their home. The man was killed as he was trying to
protect his wife from being beaten by the soldiers. The soldiers also
shot their 12-year-old son, wounding him in the shoulder, torso, and
thigh. The bullets are still in his body. Their house—doors, floors, and
even the refrigerator—-were pockmarked from the soldiers’ machine-gun
fire. The soldiers also ransacked the house and took $1,500 and several
family photographs. Just before we left, the dead man’s friends brought
out a letter to show us, signed by 1st Lt. Justin Cole at a nearby US
military base. The letter, bearing the dead man’s photograph, stated that
the man had been helpful to US troops previously and if US officials
needed anything else from him, he would willingly cooperate. The letter
closes, “Please treat this gentleman with the dignity and respect that he
deserves.”

Something has gone terribly wrong in my country’s quest to bring freedom
to the Iraqi people. Most of the human rights abuses I saw carried out in
Palestine by the Israeli military during my two years with CPT there I
have seen carried out in Iraq by US forces in just the two months since I
arrived here. Many Iraqis our team has listened to from this area speak
of initially welcoming the US troops, who removed Saddam. They were
hopeful for a peaceful, prosperous life on their farmland with their
families. What they received instead was house raids, and dead wives and
children. Now they support the armed resistance. In return for these
violations of dignity and human rights, daily my neighbors return to the
US in coffins draped with flags. At the end of these past several weeks
of numerous soldier casualties, what has my country learned?

Traveling back along the road blocked earlier by the Humvee ambush, we
noted that the site of the ambush was completely cleared of all evidence
of an attack. Even the burn marks were cleaned away. It is a practice
designed to increase morale of the soldiers who must still patrol the area
after an ambush, and to remove any signs which might raise the morale of
the resistance: Pretend it never happened. Our team has seen this
practice used by US forces on several prior occasions.

How much more will we pretend has never happened, and at what cost?

Photos corresponding to this release will be posted shortly on
www.cpt.org/gallery

Testimony taken from a minor mistreated by U.S. forces in Iraq

Greetings everyone, I'm sorry for not having written. Work has been very
busy. We are compiling a number of stories like this and I will start
sending them to you as I can. This is the first one we released on our
Iraq CPT list:

TESTIMONY OF AN IRAQI MINOR DETAINED AND MISTREATED BY US FORCES

The following statement was recorded by CPT members Le Anne Clausen
and David Milne in a neighborhood heavily affected by US house raids
in Baghdad. The family has asked that the 16 year old youth who gave
the testimony not be identified because his relatives are still
detained.
--------------

"At 2:30am, US troops came to our house, and ordered our entire family
outside. They ransacked the house searching for something, but they
didn't tell us what they wanted. They broke the locks to our cabinet
[a large storage chest and display case along one wall of the front
room] and threw the contents onto the floor, even though our father
gave them the cabinet key so they wouldn't have to do this. They
took our money and a gold wedding necklace belonging to my mother.
My father, cousin, older brother, and I were tied and taken away. We
were not told why we were being taken.

"We were taken to the soldier's military base at a palace within this
district and kept in a small dark room. We were tied at our wrists
with plastic ties behind our backs the entire night. In the morning,
we were put out into the sunlight, as a type of punishment. The
soldiers were verbally abusive towards us. We asked for shade, but
the soldiers refused. We were squatting in the sun all day.
[Temperatures at the time were 110—120F]. When I was taken, I was
only wearing my underwear because I was sleeping. I was
embarrassed. These were my only clothes during the time I was in
custody.

"The first day, our hands were still tied behind our back with the
plastic ties. Because of this, we were unable to drink any water.
We explained this to the soldiers, and they refused to re-tie us so
we could drink. We asked if just one of us could be re-tied with his
hands in front of him so that he could help the rest of us to drink.
The soldiers refused. The soldiers re-tied us with the plastic ties
in front of us on the next day.

"The water they gave us for drinking was also kept out in the sun
with us. This way it was too hot to drink. Another day I asked a
soldier for water, because I hadn't had anything to drink for the
entire day in the sun. He beat me on my back and chest, while
another soldier kicked me in the back. Both were verbally abusive
towards me during the beating.

"I was forced once to drink a strange kind of juice. I didn't like
it, so I said, `no, thank you.' The soldiers then put the bottle in
my mouth and forced me to swallow all of it.

"We were treated like animals. The soldiers would grab us by the head
and shove us in the direction they wanted us to move. When we were
beaten, I couldn't distinguish when it was from a baton and when it
was with fists. We were forced to squat much of the time.

"One night my 18-year-old brother and I were kept in an open-air
passageway, but we didn't know how large it was because we were
blindfolded. We heard a tank approaching us. It was so close, the
ground was shaking beneath us. The sound was deafening. We were
screaming to each other and the guards, we were sure we would be run
over and executed. Then the tank passed."

[The son asked his mother to leave the room so he can tell the CPTers
something privately].

"My brother asked for some water. The guard gagged him and began
beating him around his mouth until blood started flowing from his
mouth. My brother screamed in pain. We also screamed in protest,
and to encourage him to scream so they would stop this abuse. We
were then beaten also, for advising him to scream. We were beaten in
the neck, back, and behind." [The boy demonstrated how and where he
was beaten. He indicated that his buttocks were held apart and he
was kicked in the anus].

"It is because of this beating that my father is now suffering from a
heart condition."

"I was released wearing only my underwear and forced to walk back to
my home in broad daylight. I was humiliated. Also, everyone thought
from my dress that I had been caught stealing. I was also badly
sunburned from my time in detention without shade.

"The officers told me upon my release, "Don't tell anyone about what
happened here, or we'll come pick you up again." I was released at
3pm, and told to come back at 4pm to care for the other detainees—if
they wanted clothes or food, I was to get these things for them. I
protested, saying, "This is not my duty." A woman soldier screamed at
me, "Shut up! Shut up!" I left, and didn't return until the next
day. At that time, the soldiers refused to let me into the base. I
returned home.

"I am in shock now from this treatment, and I can never forget it
until I die. When I got out, I behaved as though I was crazy, like I
was lost."

The boy's mother told the CPT workers, "When my son first came home,
he was abnormal. We couldn't control him, he was completely
changed. He has nightmares every night, and wakes up shaking and
screaming."

A friend of the family, who was present during CPT's interview with
the family, is a local human rights activist and attended a human
rights conference organized by the Coalition Provisional Authority
one month earlier. He said he raised this case with the sponsoring
officials. The CPA sponsoring officials warned him not to discuss
cases like these when the conference was over. The officials did not
give any reason for their order.

The mother said, "The US has a hypocritical policy. They speak all
the time about human rights, but they don't believe in it themselves.
"Since this happened, I am lost now. I don't know what I can do."

The family feels that the detentions were arbitrary. No soldier has
returned to their home to tell them why they have been arrested or
what they were searching for on the night the soldiers broke into
their home. No receipts were issued for the money and jewelry
confiscated and it is unlikely they will ever get these back, or
receive compensation for the broken furniture. The family was only
able to get information about their relatives' locations through
lists provided by Christian Peacemaker Teams working with the mosque
in their district. The son was held for ten days. The three detained
relatives still remain incarcerated at various prison camps throughout
Iraq.