Articles from inside Iraq

Sometimes people in the states have asked me how people in Iraq, especially in Baghdad, cope on a daily basis with the ongoing carnage and relentless violence. I have the same question. It is one that continuously plagues me. As a nurse, as someone who lived in Baghdad, I have some familiarity with the hospital scene there. Not only in the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion, but also during the bombing of Baghdad and later under the occupation, I was able to visit hospitals in Iraq on an ongoing basis. Because the situation has so drastically deteriorated over the last years, it has become increasingly difficult to get information and a sense of the situation within Iraq.

Because of death threats, kidnappings and assassinations, most of the senior doctors have fled Iraq. In one of the general hospitals in Baghdad, a hospital known to me, only 8 surgeons remain from the 28 previously working there. These hospitals were once major teaching facilities. Now teaching is no longer possible due to lack of doctors, medicines and supplies. No longer do “daily clinical rounds” take place on units. The public hospitals have been turned into large emergency wards. Out of necessity and pure volume, the victims of explosions and car bombs have taken over as it were. They take preference over patients needing “routine” procedures such as operations for tumors or interventions for gastro-intestinal, cardiac or neurological needs, medical services we take for granted. Imagine this. No insulin is available in Baghdad. It is called health care of extremity.

“What shall I do, where shall I go?” my neighbour Um Ahmed asked me over and over again when I was back in Baghdad a few weeks ago. Um Ahmed, 45, recently became a widow after her husband was killed by militia in her shop.

Four years on and the taste of liberation and freedom remain bitter. When I think back to all we have passed though in these four long dark years I force myself to laugh in order to stop the tears. We Iraqis, hundreds of thousands of us are now displaced; we are like foreigners in our own country.

I remember how we used to gather at the table to eat our evening meal that consisted of anything that was available and we would listen to Um Ahmed’s stories. Like so many other Iraqis, I lived under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and as a doctor I earned a salary of $1 a month. Even so, I look back and remember the cooked aubergine, and the laughter and jokes over dinner. I remember that we would eat the black bread that my mother used to cook in the oven of our home. Often we were forced to drink poor quality tea and could only buy new clothing — a shirt, a pair of trousers or a skirt for the women — every two or three years as money was tight. Still I remember these times for the laughter, though we were feeling lost without hope, trying to see light at the end of the tunnel. Even then there was a deep joy and happiness, knowing that all of us were together and content in being together.

Today, four years on and we have cellular phones, even if we are unable to buy credit to make a phone call to family or friends. We are able to drink Pepsi and we are all eating white bread now, some of us are lucky enough to be driving a Korean car and others even have passports. But we have lost the laughter and we are missing the feeling of all of our families being together in one place. Our smiles have vanished.

Four years into our liberation and getting one’s hands on a satellite phone or passport is like striking gold. A passport in today’s Iraq is one of the most precious things that anyone can have. There is a booming trade in the black market, with Iraqi’s desperate to get out of Baghdad and across the broken country. The UN estimates that more than 50,000 Iraqis are leaving the country every month. To get the new digitalised and shiny “G series” Iraqi passport you have to pay an average of $500. When you have the new passport it feels like you have the key to heaven — you have a chance to be born again, a chance to maybe stay alive and get away from a country that is bleeding and traumatised.

Every day tens of private cars and buses make the long and uncertain journey out of Iraq, trying to reach the borders of Syria or Jordan; an attempt to wave goodbye to the death and misery inside Iraq. The other precious wonder in Iraq is the satellite phone which has became very popular as it’s the cheapest way to contact family members. This phone is like an extended family member and without it there is no hope of staying in contact or even knowing where anyone is.

What is happening in Iraq now is very difficult to describe. More than 2 million Iraqis have left the country entirely with almost 600,000 other displaced; forced to leave their homes and move to areas considered safer for them and their families. Those that have the financial means have left or are trying to get to Syria or Jordan or even Egypt. The question that everyone is asking is what will happen next? Most answers are too painful to think about, and sometimes the questions are too painful to ask. Militias, gangs, gunmen are now control of daily life in Iraq. You can wake up at morning and you will find a paper in front of your house threatening you and demanding that you leave the country, evacuate the house; often it is impossible to know why you or a loved one has been targeted. Many times this happens when there is ethnic tension, so the Shia are forced to leave the Sunni areas and the Sunnis are forced to leave the Shia areas. When you are singled out and told to leave you have no option but to leave, often with no time to even pack your belongings and no idea where you are going.

Many Iraqis flee to Jordan and try and find some accommodation and way to have enough money to cover the basics. The price of everything has gone through the roof. Some Iraqis keep on moving and end up being refugees in countries far, far away. But now the Jordanian government has started to restrict entry for Iraqis and many are finding that their lives are becoming more difficult inside Jordan itself. Now at the Iraqi-Jordanian border crossing there is a notice that says that Iraqi men aged between 18-35 are banned from entering Jordan.

Syria resembles hope and a ring of safety for many Iraqis, but even that ring is starting to strangle Iraqis day by day. Everyday it seems that the obstacles ahead of Iraqis finding a safe place to live are mounting.

Dr Omer is a cardiovascular specialist. He left his job and is now working in a primary health clinic. “What shall I do?” he asks, “I’ve been threatened by armed militias inside the hospital, and already three surgeons have been killed and now there are only three of us left and I can’t be the next target as I have a child to raise.” Later he adds: “I am not happy with what I doing; it’s like asking the officer to work as solider. I am doing the same thing. I was a specialist doctor, now I am working as a junior doctor because they will not employ me here in Syria.”

Hussein is a graduate of a school of engineering and he is now working as a waiter in a restaurant. “I used to have the ambition to become a lecturer in my school but now I can’t as my brother has been killed by gunmen and we have been threatened and told to leave the area as we are Shia. I do not want to stay here, I cannot. I am trying to find a way of smuggling myself to Europe and seeking asylum.” I asked him about how he would return to Iraq. “If we had the same Iraq that we had four years ago I would be the first one to return. Who accepts indignity? Who accepts to be stranger in another country? At least four years ago we were safe, and I had a house.” At that moment I could see that Hussein wanted to break down, just as I did.

Who accepts to be without a country? Who accepts to be without identity? Who accepts to be without history? Of course, those who live in the Green Zone are living in a different world, with their different coloured passports. They have 24 hours of electricity and can fill their cars with benzene. They do not need to queue.

Um Ahmed starts crying again as she describes to me how she tried to find a safe place for her two boys. She was forced by Jordanian authorities to return to Iraq and in Syria discovered that Iraqis are only allowed to stay for 15 days. She finishes her conversation with me swearing by God, “Wallahi, I do not want any thing. I am not afraid for myself. I am afraid for those two orphans. Who will be with them? They have no guilt. I want them to have a future.”

I felt like my soul had broken into pieces when I heard her say this. We no longer have a country; we have become strangers in our own land.

Eman Ahmed Khammas (Former co-director of Occupation Watch - Iraqi Writer - 30 April 2007)

According to the American occupation authorities, the new -3.5 meter high, 5 kilometers long - wall which is being built around Adamiya neighborhood (north of Baghdad), is to protect Sunni from Shiite militias' attacks. But no one is really buying this lie, including the American troops on the ground, who say that it is built for better control of the insurgency, as a part of the latest security crackdown.

It is also difficult to imagine how this wall would protect the civilians, as it would not prevent the rockets and mortars attacking the area almost everyday. Actually, queuing at the wall's few entrances for hours would expose them to more dangers of bombing and random shooting. It sounds strange too, that the American troops would worry about protecting Adamiya as it is one of the strongest holds of the resistance, according to the Americans again.

The strategy is simply to divide Baghdad in many smaller and easily controlled areas, under sectarian segregation names, to eliminate the resistance. Similar walls were built before, in Ghazaliya, west of Baghdad, few months ago, and on the airport highway two years ago (when it was called the death highway). There are at least other 10 new similar walls to be erected soon in different parts of Baghdad, according to the military spokesman of the Iraqi government. (other sources say 30).

Barriers of big concrete blocks, dividing areas, streets, and surrounding facilities were everywhere in Baghdad in the last 4 years, deforming the face of the city, making transport almost impossible and exposing civilians' lives to dangers.

Adhamiya is a significant area, historically, culturally, politically, and geographically speaking. It is the oldest center of the city which generated many important patriotic names in the modern history of Iraq. Ghettoizing walls would turn it in a prison, where citizens would be exposed to biometric technology, identification badges, and scanner searching every time they want to enter or go out of the neighbourhood.

Similar procedures are used in different parts of Iraq. Falluja, Ramadi, Mosul, Tal Afar, Haditha, Al Qaim…among many other areas. They failed. The Baghdad latest crackdown, which is the third big joint military operation of its sort, did not stop or even reduce the tens of unidentified and mutilated corpses to be found every morning in the streets, or the rockets and mortars to hit different parts of it.

This strategy of walled-up security pockets, under sectarian pretexts, turns Baghdad into big prisons, discriminating and isolating the communities, reinforcing the sectarian divisions, and increasing violence. It is not just another military idea to decrease the number of coffins going back to the U.S. A quick review of the occupation political decisions in Iraq in the past 4 years would easily reveal the true aim of sowing dissension among the Iraqis.

PS. Troops of the Iraqi "National Guards" raided Numan hospital, the biggest and only hospital in Adamiya until further notice. The troops ordered, all the doctors, nurses, technicians, all employees and all patients to leave immediately, and threatened to shoot them on the spot if they do not.

On the other hand, Adamiya is, practically under 24 hour curfew especially after the NGs arrested at least 40 citizens near the hospital earlier. The Adamiya Bridge is closed (the only bridge left to reach the area, after the Sarrafiya Bridge was blown up two weeks ago). All the commercial shops, markets and schools are closed.

Numan hospital is one of the biggest in Baghdad, serving hundreds of thousands of civilians in the northern area, especially in the last 2 years when movement in Baghdad became difficult and dangerous, and after armed militias controlled the hospitals and turned them to traps for kidnapping and killing the people.

Last January, the municipality of Baghdad published a short advertisement calling tenders to bid on burying the tens of "unidentified" bodies found in the streets of the capital every morning for almost a year now. Few months before, the Iraqi ministry of Health proudly declared that it imported two big refrigerators with a capacity of 2 hundred bodies each, to keep those "unidentified" bodies. At the same time a new very big "state" graveyard was created to bury the bodies, after giving them numbers and taking their pictures , just in case one day a family would be lucky enough to identify a son, a husband, or a father…

This is why millions of Iraqis are leaving home. Every morning, a long queue of black-shrouded women, of all ages, wait for hours at the gate of the Baghdad morgue, asking for the body of a loved one who disappeared, kidnapped, or arrested few days ago…Men do not look for the dead in the morgue, because there are always some armed men hiding around the corner hunting those bereaved fathers and brothers. By passers in streets everyday do not dare to approach dead bodies scattered here and there, somebody might be watching and would shoot them.

These are just few examples of the new Iraqi scene, which bypassed any imaginable limit of the absurd and the surrealist. Not to mention anything about the bombings, the car bombs, the random shooting, the kidnapping, the indiscriminate and collective arrests, the horrible stories of torture in prisons…(PM Maliki said in Sharm Al-Sheikh that the security is progressing and the security plan is going well).

The daily life conditions are simply impossible in Iraq now, but this is not why the Iraqis are leaving their country, they do not have this luxury…they are fleeing for survival, for being, they are well aware of the refugees conditions inside or outside Iraq.

UNCHR says that 4 million Iraqis are homeless now; other refugee organizations say that the number is the double. But how big the number is, does not matter, really. The fact is that the so called international community recognizes now, four years after the US-led occupation of Iraq, that there is a humanitarian crisis in Iraq, although the crisis began 4 years ago, or to be more accurate 17 years ago, when Iraq was devastated, put under the most outrageous international sanctions that killed and uprooted 5 million Iraqis. In the last 4 years hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed (again the numbers are not the issue here, whether they are 600.000 or 800.000, according to the latest estimation last year). What is this called if not a genocide?

UNCHR held an international meeting in Geneva late last month, calling upon the world nations, states and organizations to help the starving, homeless Iraqis, begging for donations to aid one of the richest countries in the world, and to open the doors of safety for the fleeing nations from the hell of violence.

Lately, many other prestigious international organizations sent out similar warnings of an impending tragedy in the Middle East: the Intel Red Cross, the Human Rights Watch, and the Amnesty International. Good, it is important to raise the awareness of the world to this crisis, and to urge the peoples to help the Iraqis. But it is really striking how NONE of these prestigious organizations, including UNCHR, actually named the real perpetrator of these crimes. None of them called the original crime in its name, or the original criminal in the proper name: the occupation and the US administration.

This is extremely important. Not only because the US is legally and logically responsible for the suffering and the humiliation of the homeless Iraqis, and there for should pay every cent to guarantee a dignified life for every one of the Iraqis. And please do not misunderstand me. I am NOT calling upon the Americans to send financial aid to the Iraqi refugees. NO, NO. I am just stating a fact, and the fact is the pentagon spends $8 Billion (8000.000000) a month on the military operations in Iraq, but the US donate 18 million to the relief program ALL OVER the WORLD, if they do at all.

But it is more important to hold the American-led invasion and occupation of Iraq responsible of all the suffering, the destruction and the genocide, because this is the only correct first step to solve the Iraqi refugees, and other, problems. But unfortunately, no one was "undiplomatic" enough to call the criminal a criminal in his face, to say the least.

In fact, the high commissioner of the UNCHR referred to "complexity of the situation" in Iraq, the "sectarian violence", the "relevant parties"! without mentioning who they are, and actually praised the Iraqi government willingness to address the needs of the displaced and to support the efforts of the hosting countries!!. But please, Sir, the Iraqi government IS responsible for the safety and well being of all the Iraqi people INSIDE their country, not only the homeless, but all the people, otherwise, if it is incapable or unwilling to do that, it should go away, simply.

Amnesty International, on the other hand, called upon the Iraqi government, the "multinational forces", and the other governments and leaders in the region to "redouble their efforts" to find a political solution!! NO, please, what they have already done is more than enough.

Well, these organizations are talking from a "humanitarian" point of view, not political. But the humanitarian face of the Iraqi problem, a catastrophe in itself, is a reflection of a bigger and more dangerous problem: the criminal occupation. Some Iraqi refugees left the country because they were terrorized by the sectarian militias, that is true, but who is behind these militias. How many people outside Iraq have heard the name of Shiite or Sunnis before the American invasion? Who allowed them and included them in the new Iraqi security forces? Who maintains them? It is the Occupation.

So the Iraqi refugees become a burden on the others! My God, these are the best of the Iraqi minds. It would be very useful if the UNCHR tell the world how many of them have a higher degree in sciences, how many of them are university professors, medical doctors, engineers, lawyers, officers, teachers, linguists, intellectuals, journalists, artists…these refugees build Iraq, why would they need a third country to host them. Is not it in the interest of the occupiers that they should be far away from Iraq?

Eman Ahmed Khammas is a former co-director of Occupation Watch, Iraqi writer, journalist and translator. She's a member of the BRussells Tribunal Advisory Committee and currently living in exile.

'50,000 Iraqi refugees' forced into prostitution

Women and girls, many alarmingly young, who fled the chaos at home are being further betrayed after reaching 'safety' in Syria

By Nihal Hassan in Damascus (24 June 2007)

It's Monday night in a dingy club on the outskirts of the Syrian capital. Two dozen girls are moving half-heartedly on the dance floor, lit up by flashing disco lights.

They are dessed in tight jeans, low-cut tops and knee-high boots, but the girls' make-up can't disguise the fact that most are in their mid-teens. It's a strange sight in a conservative Muslim country, but this is the sex business, and it's booming as a result of the war in Iraq.

Backstage, the manager sits in his leather chair, doing business. A Saudi client is quoted $500 for one of the girls. Eventually he beats it down to $300. Next door, in a dimly lit room, the next shift of girls arrives, taking off the black all-covering abayasthey wear outside and putting on lipstick and mascara.

To judge from the cars parked outside, the clients come from all over the Gulf region - many are young Saudi men escaping from an even more conservative moral climate. But the Syrian friend who has brought me here tells me that 95 per cent of the girls are Iraqi.

Most are unwilling to talk, but Zahra, an attractive girl with a bare midriff and tattoos, tells me she's 16. She has been working in this club since fleeing to Syria from Baghdad after the war. She doesn't like it, she says, "but what can we do? I hope things get better in Iraq, because I miss it. I want to go back, but I have to look after my sister". Zahra points to a thin, pubescent girl with long black hair, who seems to be dancing quite happily. Aged 13, Nadia started in the club two months ago.

As the girls dance suggestively, allowing their breasts to brush against each other, one winks at a customer. But these girls are not just providing the floor show - they have paid to be here, and they need to pick up a client, or they'll lose money. If successful, they'll earn about $60, equivalent to a month's wages in a factory.

There are more than a million Iraqi refugees in Syria, many are women whose husbands or fathers have been killed. Banned from working legally, they have few options outside the sex trade. No one knows how many end up as prostitutes, but Hana Ibrahim, founder of the Iraqi women's group Women's Will, puts the figure at 50,000.

I met Fatima in a block of flats operating informally as a brothel in Saida Zainab, a run-down area with a large Iraqi population. Millions of Shias go there every year, because of the shrine of the prophet Mohamed's granddaughter. "I came to Syria after my husband was killed, leaving me with two children," Fatima tells me. "My aunt asked me to join her here, and my brothers pressured me to go." She didn't realise the work her aunt did, and she would be forced to take up, until she arrived.

Fatima is in her mid-20s, but campaigners say the number of Iraqi children working as prostitutes is high. Bassam al-Kadi of Syrian Women Observatory says: "Some have been sexually abused in Iraq, but others are being prostituted by fathers and uncles who bring them here under the pretext of protecting them. They are virgins, and they are brought here like an investment and exploited in a very ugly way."

Further viewing: Nihal Hassan and Nima Elbagir's report will appear on 'More4 News' at 8pm tomorrow

Articles, stories & eye-witness accounts from inside Iraq

Page 5 (March 2007 - 2008 )

'50,000 Iraqi refugees' forced into prostitution

Women and girls, many alarmingly young, who fled the chaos at home are being further betrayed after reaching 'safety' in Syria

By Nihal Hassan in Damascus (24 June 2007)