Erasing Iraq: The Human Costs of Carnage

Erasing Iraq

Erasing Iraq The Human Costs of Carnage

Michael Otterman and Richard Hil with Paul Wilson

in association with

The Plumbing Trades Employee Union of Australia (PTEU)

First published 2010 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 www.plutobooks.com Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 Copyright © Michael Otterman and Richard Hil 2010 The right of Michael Otterman and Richard Hil to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7453 2898 0 Hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 2897 3 Paperback Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin. 10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1 Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, 33 Livonia Road, Sidmouth, EX10 9JB England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton Printed and bound in the European Union by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents

Foreword by Dahr Jamail Acknowledgments Introduction: Hearts of Stone

ix xv 1

1 Iraqis Under Siege Everything is Destroyed Interests Inimical to Our Own Mouths Open Swallowing Bombs The Price of Sanctions Fear and Flight Online Witnesses

14 14 19 24 28 34 37

2 Refugee Voices Exodus Three Waves of Suffering In Jordan In Syria In Transit In Australia

54 54 62 67 75 79 83

3 Censoring Civilians Favorable Objectivity Managing Grenada, Panama, and Gulf War I A Double-Edged Sword Embedded Perspectives Collective Self-Censorship Carry Our Water Shaping Falluja

88 88 91 95 104 107 112 118

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4 Dead Bodies Don’t Count Neither Time Nor Inclination We May Never Know Conflicting Counts The Six-Figure Fight The Lesser of Two Evils? Still Counting Opening the Vault

130 131 133 139 145 150 152 157

5 Iraqi Sociocide Childhood Lost Women at Risk Gay Life and Death End of Faith Pushed Out Looting is Liberating Year Zero Lost Antiquity Iraqi Sociocide

162 163 168 173 179 181 183 188 196 204

Postscript: People of No Moment

206

Notes Index

214 238

To Helena Hil, mother of Richard Hil, who died on July 12, 2008 as the fieldwork for this book was being completed in Sweden. Born in Poland, Helena was subjected to forced agricultural labor in Germany (1943–45) and, as a displaced person following her release, she experienced the hardships of violent upheaval and dislocation. She would have empathized deeply with the plight of millions of Iraqis traumatized by war and conflict, and perhaps wondered why the innocent continue to suffer so needlessly.

The names of some interview subjects have been changed for their safety.

Foreword Dahr Jamail

What lengths men will go in order to carry out, to their extreme limit, the rites of a collective self-worship which fills them with a sense of righteousness and complacent satisfaction in the midst of the most shocking injustices and crimes. —Thomas Merton, Love and Living

On Wednesday, March 25, 2009, Major General David Perkins, referring to the frequency of attacks on US military targets in Iraq, told reporters in Baghdad: “Attacks are at their lowest since August 2003.” He added, “There were 1250 attacks a week at the height of the violence; now sometimes there are less than 100 a week.” While his rhetoric made headlines in some mainstream US media outlets, it was little consolation for the families of 28 Iraqis killed the following day in attacks across the country. Nor did it bring solace to the relatives of 27 Iraqis slain in a March 23, 2009 suicide attack, or to the survivors of a bomb attack at a bus terminal in Baghdad which killed nine people that same day. Having recently returned from Iraq, I experienced life in Baghdad where people were dying violent deaths on a daily basis. Nearly every day of the month I spent there, a car bomb exploded somewhere in the capital city. Nearly every day, the so-called Green Zone was hit by mortars. Every day there were kidnappings. On good days there were four hours of electricity on the national grid, in a country ix

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approaching its eighth year of being occupied by the US military, and where roughly 150,000 private contractors and 124,000 US troops still remain. Upon returning home, I experienced the disconnect between that reality, lived by approximately 25 million Iraqis, and the surreal experience of living in the United States—where most media either pretend the occupation of Iraq is not happening or use the yardstick of decreased US military personnel deaths as a measure of success. In the words of Major General Perkins: “If you take a look at military deaths, which is an indicator of violence and lethality out there, US combat deaths are at their lowest levels since the war began six years ago.” But this is a less useful metric when one looks at the broader picture inside of Iraq: the ongoing daily slaughter of Iraqis, the near total lack of functional infrastructure, the fact that one in six Iraqis remains displaced from their home, or the fact that at least 1.2 million Iraqis have died as a result of the US-led invasion and occupation of their country. More than 80 months of occupation, with over $800 billion spent on the war (by conservative estimates), has resulted in 2.2 million internally displaced Iraqis, 2.7 million refugees, 2615 professors, scientists, and doctors killed in cold blood, and 341 dead media workers. Over $13 billion was misplaced by the current Iraqi government, and another $400 billion (with some estimates as high is $1 trillion) is required to rebuild the Iraqi infrastructure. Unemployment vacillates between 25 and 70 percent, depending on the month. There are two dozen car bombs on average per month, 10,000 cases of cholera per year, 4352 dead US soldiers, and over 73,000 physically or psychologically wounded soldiers.

f o r e wor d   xi

There is no normal life in Baghdad. While it is accurate and technically correct to say that there is less violence now compared to 2006, when between 100 and 300 Iraqis were slaughtered on a daily basis, Iraq now more than ever resembles a police state. It’s impossible to travel longer than five minutes without encountering an Iraqi military or police patrol—usually comprised of pickup trucks full of armed men, horns and/or sirens blaring. Begging women and children wander between cars at every intersection. US military helicopters often rumble overhead, and the roar of fighter jets or transport planes is common. There’s no talk of reparations to Iraqis for the death, destruction and chaos caused by the occupation. Neighborhoods, segregated between Sunni and Shia largely as a result of the so-called “surge” strategy, provide a blatant view of the balkanization of Iraq. Many neighborhoods are still completely surrounded by 10-foot-high concrete blast walls, rendering normal life impossible. The fear of a resurgence of violence weighs heavily on Iraqis, as the current so-called lull in violence feels tenuous, unstable, and possibly fleeting. Nobody there can predict the future, and to hope for a sustained improvement in any aspect of life feels naive, even dangerous. Iraq in Fragments—the title of a 2007 Academy Award-nominated film by James Longley—aptly describes Iraq today. The country has been destroyed by decades of US policy. Looking back only to 1980, we see the US government supporting both Iraq and Iran during their horrible eight-year war. In 1991 we see George H. W. Bush’s war against Iraq, followed by his, Bill Clinton’s, and George W. Bush’s oversight of twelve and a half years of genocidal economic sanctions which killed half a million Iraqi children.

xii  e rasing iraq

Today, under President Barack Obama, what is left of Iraq smolders in ruins, with no real end of the occupation in sight. “We’re going to have ten Army and Marine units deployed for a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan,” General George Casey told reporters in May 2009—a time frame far surpassing the original December 31, 2011 deadline for US withdrawal. All of the recent talk of withdrawal from Iraq seems like empty rhetoric indeed to most Iraqis, who can see with their own eyes the giant “enduring” US military bases now spread across their country, or the new US “embassy” in Baghdad the same size as Vatican City. The gulf between the rhetoric of withdrawal and the reality on the ground spans the distance between Iraq and the United States, while the truth is pressed in the faces of the Iraqi people each day that the occupation continues. During the darker moments when my work in Iraq feels like a heavy burden on my soul, I am always able to find solace in the fact that documenting what the US government has done to the Iraqi people over the decades is of critical importance. The Iraqi people must be given a voice. The facts of the US agenda in Iraq, and the astronomical cost paid by the Iraqi people, must be recorded. The realities of life in Iraq must be recorded for history, despite their ongoing denial in the West. Thus I felt a great sense of relief when I learned of the book Erasing Iraq: The Human Costs of Carnage, and even more so when I was asked to pen this foreword. Erasing Iraq is the rare book about Iraq that is bold enough to describe, in no uncertain terms, the US project in Iraq as a genocide, and also uses a term that most people are likely unfamiliar with, “sociocide,” previously used by

f o r ewo r d   x i i i

author Keith Doubt in Understanding Evil: Lessons from Bosnia. Sociocide is the decimation of an entire way of life, and, as Doubt explains, entails a “coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of the essential foundations of society.” As the authors of the present book make clear, this concept can also be used in the case of Iraq: The willful destruction of Iraq and her people by the United States and allies during the Gulf War, UN sanctions period, and second Gulf War— especially in light of US-condoned looting in April 2003 and support of violent fundamentalists—constitute attempted sociocide.

We should all feel grateful that the articulate, extremely well-researched Erasing Iraq exhaustively documents the decades-long US war against the country. Whilst logging quotes, statistics, and mountains of facts, including blatant corporate press complicity in the crimes against Iraqis committed by the US government and military, the human element is not forgotten. We hear the voices of Iraqi refugees scattered around the globe, from Australia to Syria, along with the words of Iraqi bloggers who have done what most mainstream media outlets in the West refuse to do: humanize the Iraqi people, allowing them to speak, and tell the truth about what has been done to their country, their culture, their society, and their lives. If I could recommend only one book that provides a comprehensive overview of both the situation in Iraq today and the decades of US-backed policy it took to create this nightmare scenario, Erasing Iraq is it. The late Harold Pinter was England’s most influential modern playwright and winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature. During his acceptance speech, an ailing Pinter

xiv   e rasing iraq

offered a scathing critique of the denial by the corporate media and Western governments of the suffering of the Iraqi people. Pinter said that, from the perspective of those in power, Iraqis are “of no moment. Their deaths don’t exist. They are blank. They are not even recorded as being dead.” In the postscript, the authors of Erasing Iraq express hope that their work, in Pinter’s words, contributes to “restoring what is so nearly lost to us—the dignity of man.” Erasing Iraq has done exactly this, and then some.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Tamara Fenjan, for her tireless efforts translating and empathizing with countless Iraqis we met in Syria and Jordan. Antony Loewenstien, without whose vital guidance and ample links this book could not have taken shape. Tony Murphy of the Plumbing Trades Employees Union of Australia for his enthusiasm and gracious financial support. Karim, our humble host in Sweden, for his warm and giving nature. Scholars and staff of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney, who provided a nurturing work environment. Robyn Lincoln and Jo Jones for their considerable assistance with research, plus the undergraduate social science students at Southern Cross University, Tweed/Gold Coast campus for their insightful comments. Jessica and Jen for their enduring encouragement. Finally, we’d like to thank Samer, Ahmed, Fadila, Basel, Ahlam, Rafed and all the other Iraqis that spent the time and energy sharing their stories with us. Our hearts remain with you along the new roads ahead.

Special note from Tony Murphy, Federal President, Plumbing Trades Employees Union of Australia: Whether speaking out against the atrocities committed to the indigenous population of Australia or those on Iraqi civilians by the West, the Plumbing Trades Employees Union of Australia has always maintained a strong stance on justice and human rights. xv

xvi   e rasing iraq

Following a chance meeting with co-author Paul Wilson in Phuket, Thailand, it became very clear to me that a strong partnership could be formed to help give a voice to Iraqi civilians who have suffered so much at the hands of Western states vying for control of Iraqi oil. Destiny demanded this book be written. All who have contributed towards it have enabled this to happen. Tony Murphy Federal President Plumbing Trades Employees Union, Australia December 23, 2009

Introduction: Hearts of Stone

The idea for this book started with a simple question: What do Iraqis think? While exceptions existed—especially online—Western mainstream media failed miserably in conveying Iraqi perspectives on the run-up to the 2003 invasion. What did Iraqis think of Saddam Hussein? Did they want the United States to bring about a regime change? How did they envision their country in the post-Saddam era? In the space of these unanswered questions, imperial ambitions sheathed in propaganda proliferated. Behind the babble about weapons of mass destruction, shock and awe, and deadlines for capitulation were the aspirations of the United States to invade, occupy, and remake the Iraqi state. Lost were the voices of 25 million Iraqis whose “liberation” was ostensibly intended. A failure to know what these people thought inspired us to write this book. Through interviews with Iraqi refugees scattered across continents and blog posts written by Iraqis amid shattering explosions and chaos, we were able to piece together a general narrative of loss. Most Iraqis were quick to point out a crucial fact: the US war on Iraq did not start in 2003, but in 1990. This fact explains—perhaps more than any other—why many Iraqis were cynical about US intentions in 2003. Amid rampant unemployment and a breakdown in law and order, already-skeptical Iraqis turned to the insurgency to rid their country of foreign occupiers. Only 1

2  erasing iraq

by speaking with Iraqis and engaging with Iraqi narratives did we begin to understand and fully empathize with the plight of the Iraqi people. It is their thoughts, feelings, and experiences—and the mechanisms of their suppression— that we hope to share with you in this book. “I don’t own a thing and even if I owned the world, if Iraq would become a country again, I would never return,” said Sadi as he clutched a tattered handkerchief between his dry, twisted fingers.1 Sadi is only one among the millions of Iraqis displaced by US-sponsored war and aggression in his country. More than 4.8 million remain displaced, while over 1 million have died since the 2003 invasion. To understand the tragedy of Iraq, one must look to the experiences of those like Sadi. His story is tragic, but not unique. Sadi, partly paralyzed by arthritis on his right side, lives with his wife and two children in a run-down concrete apartment block off a dusty lane in Jeramana—a crowded hub for Iraqi refugees in Damascus, Syria. As we spoke to him during a crisp February afternoon in 2008, his wife nervously served us black tea and salted nuts—ubiquitous treats in the Middle East. On the wall behind Sadi was a frayed drawing of a symbol of the Mandaean religion: a wooden cross draped by a white cloth. Called a darfash, the points of the cross are said to represent life, love, purity and knowledge while the contours of the white fabric symbolize the meandering flow of water. In Baghdad, Sadi owned a jewelry workshop that produced gold necklaces and rings. The shop was one of the first things he lost in 2003. “It was bombed by a car loaded with explosives. I lost everything, my workshop with all my gold and the things inside,” he said.The war then found its way into Sadi’s home. In early 2005, four

i n t ro d u c t i o n   3

masked men barged into his living room. “They were not after my money—they were after my faith,” Sadi recalled. They wanted him to convert, but Sadi refused. “Every man should be free to keep his religion,” he told them. “All religions should be respected, and every man should be respected for his religion.” The last surviving Gnostic religion, Mandaeism predates Christianity. Adherents venerate John the Baptist as their great teacher. Water is central to the religion—it is believed necessary to purify the mind and body. Weddings, funerals and other religious ceremonies are held on riverbanks in waist-deep water. The most devout Mandaeans even baptize their food before eating. The Mandaeans have lived for over two millennia in marshlands where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet. They survived Mongol invasions, bloody massacres at the hands of Sultans and Shahs, and the brutal reign of Saddam Hussein. Under Saddam, higher education and jobs in government were closed to Mandaeans, some of whom were bullied in school or ridiculed while performing river rites. But after the invasion the situation grew deadly as sectarian chaos engulfed Iraq. As the Washington Post explained: “In their quest for stability in Iraq, US officials have empowered tribal and religious leaders, Sunni and Shiite, who reject the secularism that Saddam Hussein once largely maintained.” In turn, these leaders enforced strict interpretations of Islam that encouraged violence against Iraqi minorities. In 2003, the late Shia leader, Ayatollah al-Hakeem, decreed Mandaeans “impure” and approved their killing or forcible conversion. In 2005, another fatwa reportedly issued by the Information Foundation of Al-Sadr Office in Basra reiterated this edict, accusing Mandaeans of “systematic adultery” and “trickery.” Since then, hundreds

4   erasing i raq

have been killed, kidnapped, and forcibly converted. While their community in Iraq numbered up to 40,000 before the war, today the figure has dipped to only 5000.2 The masked men left that day, but returned two weeks later. This time they were armed. “The men were full of hatred and aggression and with hearts of stone,” Sadi recalled as his small brown eyes welled with tears. He then began to speak quickly. He said the men gathered his wife, daughter, and two young sons into the living room and demanded that he convert. Again he refused. “They then took my son out of my wife’s hands,” he said. Abed was only four years old. “We were screaming and crying,” Sadi said, as he watched the men run from the house with his boy. Three days later Sadi received a phone call. “You will find the corpse behind the Bilat el Shohadah school by the motorway,” said a man’s voice. Then the line went dead. Sadi rushed to the place along the busy road. Our translator, Tamara, herself an Iraqi-Swede, paused to let Sadi calm down and have a sip of tea. Sadi reached for his handkerchief again and dabbed his eyes. “We found the dead body of my son,” he said in high-pitched moans. “He had been beaten and shot in the head.” Iraqis of all religions, ethnicities, and socioeconomic statuses have been cruelly affected by US-sponsored war, sanctions and occupation, but their voices have largely gone unheard. In Denial: History Betrayed, Tony Taylor tracked how rogue historians, calculating politicians, and nationalist and ethnic leaders promote selective historical narratives in order to serve their agendas, while denying other accounts of the past.3 Resistance to claims of an Armenian genocide, denial of the Nazi holocaust, the attempted cover-up of the Japanese massacre in Nanking, and refusal to acknowledge

i n t ro d u c t i o n   5

ethnic cleansing in Palestine illustrate the lengths to which deniers will go to silence victims’ narratives. To this list of denied atrocities we add the deliberate decimation of Iraqi society by the government of the United States of America. The new Iraq—a phrase often used in the post-invasion period by the occupying powers—is, at least from the standpoint of most Iraqis, a cruel euphemism for death and destruction. For the US political leadership—especially under the administration of George W. Bush—the new Iraq was an expression of optimism based on the mistaken belief that Iraq would become a US-style democracy, provide secure oil supplies to the US, and create new business opportunities for multinational corporations. According to Canadian author and journalist Naomi Klein, the aim of the US was not simply to topple a brutal dictator—once a close ally and consumer of American military hardware, intelligence, and chemical and biological weapons—but to create an entirely new country ripe for free market capitalism. As Klein wrote: A country of 25 million would not be rebuilt as it was before the war; it would be erased, disappeared. In its place would spring forth a gleaming showroom for laissez-faire economics, a utopia such as the world had never seen. Every policy that liberates multinational corporations to pursue their quest for profit would be put into place: a shrunken state, a flexible workforce, open borders, minimal taxes, no tariffs, no ownership restrictions. The people of Iraq would, of course, have to endure some short-term pain: assets, previously owned by the state, would have to be given up to create new opportunities for growth and investment. Jobs would have to be lost and, as foreign products flooded across the border, local businesses and family farms would, unfortunately, be unable to compete. But to the authors of this plan, these would be small prices to pay for the economic boom that would surely explode once the

6  erasing iraq

proper conditions were in place, a boom so powerful the country would practically rebuild itself.4

The US takeover of the Iraqi economy began well before the invasion of 2003. Its roots lie in the fact that by 1970 US oil production had peaked, which led to a growing reliance on supplies from Middle Eastern states. The first major restrictions on oil supplies to the US came in 1973 when OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) placed an embargo on shipments, followed by the 1978 Iranian oil embargo which led to rising inflation and interest rates. These factors—coupled with the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan—prompted the United States to adopt a policy of using military force to ensure access to Middle East oil. “The region which is now threatened by Soviet troops in Afghanistan is of great strategic importance: It contains more than two-thirds of the world’s exportable oil,” Jimmy Carter said in his State of the Union address on January 23, 1980. Uninterrupted access to oil in the Persian Gulf was of paramount concern. “The Soviet effort to dominate Afghanistan has brought Soviet military forces to within 300 miles of the Indian Ocean and close to the Straits of Hormuz, a waterway through which most of the world’s oil must flow,” Carter stressed. “Let our position be absolutely he clear,” he added, outlining what would later be termed the Carter Doctrine: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.5

i n t ro d u c t i o n   7

Carter expanded US naval operations in the Gulf, acquired new bases in the region, and launched America’s “ghost war” against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Successive presidents also followed the Carter Doctrine. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush introduced trade policies and other measures to ensure that the US would have continued access to Middle Eastern oil supplies. This was linked to an increasingly strident American unilateralism designed to advance and protect US interests in the Middle East. In 1992—a few months after the first Gulf War (which dislodged Iraqi forces from oil-rich Kuwait)—top officials in the senior Bush’s administration issued the “Defense Planning Guidance” directive, a policy document stating that the US would “remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve US and Western access to the region’s oil.” Many of the neoconservative architects of this directive—Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad, “Scooter” Libby, Eric Edelman and Colin Powell—helped formulate the blueprint for US “global leadership” contained in the 1997 “Statement of Principles” published by the Project for the New American Century, an influential conservative think tank. Based on proposed increases to military spending and closer ties with allies in opposition to “hostile” regimes, the statement highlighted “America’s unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.”6 For Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and others, the salient threat to US interests resided in the Middle East—especially in the volatility of the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein and the consequent threat to oil supplies. The 1991 Gulf War failed to drive Hussein from

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power, which, as it turned out, proved the perfect pretext for George W. Bush and his administration to call for regime change in Iraq. From the date of his inauguration, Bush Jr. was determined to remove Saddam Hussein. As former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill told 60 Minutes in early 2004: “From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” and that the invasion was topic “A” on the President’s to-do list. Concrete plans to invade Iraq were drawn hours after the 9/11 attacks. According to notes taken that day by aides to Donald Rumsfeld, at 2:40 p.m. the defense secretary demanded “best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H.”—shorthand for Saddam Hussein—“at same time. Not only UBL”—the initials of Osama bin Laden. Top Bush administration officials made at least 935 false public statements about the threat posed by Iraq in the two years following September 11, 2001. The US invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003, and President Bush— awkwardly donning a snug pilot’s uniform—announced the “end of hostilities” on board the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003.7 The intentions of the United States in Iraq were clear from the start of the occupation. The Ministry of the Interior and the Oil Ministry were the only ministries secured by US troops in Baghdad while museums, libraries and even ammunition dumps were left unguarded. According to Yaroslav Trofimov of the Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon permitted the looting to undermine the Iraqi state. “Lots of military commanders at the time told me that looting is a good thing. Looting is liberating; looting undermines the old regime,” Trofimov later recalled. Amid the looting of Iraqi cultural property, public resources, and military goods,

i n t ro d u c t i o n   9

the newly appointed viceroy of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, set about dismantling the Iraqi state, in contravention of the rules of occupation set forth in the Geneva Conventions. Armed with sweeping executive powers, Bremer disbanded the Iraqi Army—creating a deluge of angry, military-trained, out-of-work men who soon turned to the insurgency—and issued orders designed to create a free-market nirvana suitable to US interests. Order 39, for example, allowed for privatization of Iraq’s 200 state-owned enterprises, 100 percent foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses, unrestricted, tax-free remittance of all profits and other funds, and 40-year ownership licenses. As noted by Antonia Juhasz, senior analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus and author of The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time, the orders forbade Iraqis from receiving preference in the reconstruction while allowing foreign corporations—Halliburton and Bechtel, for example—to buy up Iraqi businesses, do all of the work and send all of their money home. They cannot be required to hire Iraqis or to reinvest their money in the Iraqi economy. They can take out their investments at any time and in any amount.8

To ensure that the directives were implemented, Bremer’s Orders 57 and 77 called for “US-appointed auditors and inspector generals in every government ministry, with five-year terms and with sweeping authority over contracts, programs, employees and regulations.” To ensure that the new free market was properly policed, Bremer issued Order 17, which granted “foreign contractors, including private security firms, full immunity from Iraq’s laws.” According to Juhasz: “Even if they, say, kill someone or cause an environmental disaster, the injured party cannot

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turn to the Iraqi legal system. Rather, the charges must be brought to US courts.” Order 17 was repeatedly cited in the wake of the September 16, 2007 Blackwater rampage in Baghdad’s Nisour Square—an attack that killed 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians. Other orders allowed for “foreign banks to purchase up to 50% of Iraqi banks,” significant reductions in the tax rate on corporations, the lowering of income tax and the deletion of “all tariffs, customs duties, import taxes, licensing fees and similar surcharges for goods entering or leaving Iraq.” According to Juhasz, “this led to an immediate and dramatic inflow of cheap foreign consumer products, devastating local producers and sellers who were thoroughly unprepared to meet the challenge of their mammoth global competitors.” All these orders, it should be remembered, were issued unilaterally by an interim administrator with extensive executive powers, without any serious consideration of the needs and desires of the Iraq people. As Juhasz concluded: The result of these orders was to create an economic environment more favorable to U.S. corporations than laws in the United States. As a result Iraq corporations, and Iraqi workers have been excluded from the rebuilding of Iraq. And, the Iraq reconstruction has failed to provide adequate electricity, food, sewage treatment and even gasoline - but U.S. corporations have profited handsomely from this failed reconstruction.9

In “erasing” Iraq, the Bush administration set about a revisionist project that involved dismantling Iraq’s social and economic infrastructure so as to open the door for US companies to access Iraqi natural resources and reassemble the country in its own image. The radical economic restructuring plan failed because no thought was made to legitimacy and social reconstruction. Iraq soon shattered

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into many pieces united only by opposition to the US-led occupation. Rarely in the history of failed bids at imperial expansion had so much suffering ensued. In launching what amounted to a grotesque resource war the United States and its allies swept aside any real consideration of the pain and suffering that would be inflicted upon ordinary Iraqi people. The evidence charted in this book demonstrates the price that had to be paid by Iraq’s already traumatized population for causes that were certainly less noble than we were led to believe. Amid the deaths of millions and the destruction of Iraq’s economic and social infrastructures, the conflict approached the point of sociocide—the destruction of an entire way of life. But despite coordinated attacks on Iraqi people and institutions, vibrant strands of Iraqi identity remain. This book is filled with narratives of pain, resilience and hope. Though battered, Iraq and her people persist. What follows is a collection of Iraqi voices, including witnesses to the first Gulf War and UN sanctions period, survivors of the 2003 invasion, Iraqi refugees in the Middle East, Sweden and Australia, plus the collected works of Iraqi bloggers who painstakingly recorded their daily observations. Further, we bring to light not only the nature, scope and ongoing consequences of the carnage that has occurred in Iraq since at least 1990, but also the ways in which such matters have, in effect, been screened off from public scrutiny by military and political elites and the corporate media. “Asymmetrical records of destruction”— to borrow a phrase from Edward Said—dominate the discourse on Iraq. It is thus possible for US leadership to highlight the sacrifice of over 4300 US troops and to speak of “victory” without mentioning the death and destruction experienced by the Iraqi people. This reality was grossly

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apparent in the 2008 presidential debates between John McCain and Barack Obama. In the first of these debates, held in Oxford, Massachusetts on September 26, 2008, the candidates were asked by Jim Lehrer: “What do you see as the lessons of Iraq?” Mistakes were made, strategies failed. But what of Iraqi lives lost? Not a word. This is a practice familiar to the exercise of imperial and colonial power, as nations—eager to secure resources through military and economic domination—consign entire populations to historical oblivion. In Chapter 1, we chart the history of US–Iraq relations from the CIA’s early support of Saddam Hussein to the invasion and occupation in 2003. Iraqis interviewed in Syria, Jordan, Sweden and Australia detail the carnage and deprivation they experienced firsthand during the first Gulf War, UN sanctions, and 2003 attack, while Iraqi diarists and bloggers provide a searing portrait of the destruction, day-by-day, hour-by-hour, moment-by-moment. Chapter 2 describes, from the vantage point of refugees, the realities of the diaspora that began in the wake of the 1991 war but escalated to epic proportions in the post-2003 period. The accounts of Iraqis scattered around regions within Iraq and in far-flung places around the globe are testimonies to some of the horrific realities of displacement. In Chapter 3 we examine the role played by the Pentagon and the mainstream Western media—often working hand in hand— in silencing Iraqi voices. It charts the good, bad, ugly and sometimes utterly compromised nature of news reportage, which, in the final analysis, says more about the interconnections between the media, politicians and the corporate world that it does about events in Iraq. Chapter 4 delves into the controversy surrounding the vexed question of

i n t ro d u c t i o n   1 3

body counts, which, again, becomes deeply enmeshed in cultures of denial, power plays and sheer pragmatism. The question of whether body counts should occur at all, how they are conducted, the resulting public debates and processes of affirmation and denial, are all a part of the deeply political nature of such empirical projects, especially in the case of post-2003 Iraq. Finally, Chapter 5 goes beyond the quantitative concerns about body counts to highlight the comprehensive and enduring nature of death and destruction that has impacted all areas of Iraqi life. Facts surrounding the Iraqi sociocide—the total assault upon Iraqi lives, culture and national identity—have been told in fragments elsewhere, but come together in graphic detail here for the first time. Taken together, we offer a comprehensive account of the damage the United States and its allies have wrought in Iraq—and the lengths to which many have gone in order to hide the truth. We seek to inform, with the view that such knowledge can help prevent further bloodshed in the future. But, for many, it is too late. “Iraq has become a theatre for the chaos, for killings and kidnappings,” said Sadi in his crumbling Syrian flat after telling us about the murder of his son. “The fundamentalists can now do what they want. Iraq is lost.”

1 Iraqis Under Siege

On July 5, 2008, Karim, our host and translator in Sweden, wandered nervously over to one of the fruit and vegetable stalls in Rinkeby, a working-class Stockholm suburb known for its high concentration of Iraqi and Somali immigrants. Karim knew one of the young men who worked at the stalls—Amir, a sullen-looking 30-year-old lugging boxes from the back of a truck. The stall manager hovered ominously in the background as we approached. Amir spoke in furtive, hushed tones. Readjusting the cigarette balanced precariously on his lower lip, Amir laughed at the suggestion that this drizzly, cold July day was typical of the Swedish summer. “Yes, yes, it’s very cold.” As if to emphasize the point, he wore a thick, woolly hat and gloves that would befit an Olympic skier. Slowly, mediated by Karim’s translations, Amir began to talk to us in Arabic about his experiences in Iraq and Sweden.

Everything is Destroyed In 2005, Amir fled with his sister from Mosul to Jordan and arrived in Rinkeby the following year. Amir is among the 80,000 Iraqi refugees and asylum seekers to enter Sweden since 2003.1 Having left behind his parents and four sisters in extremely dangerous circumstances in Iraq, 14

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Amir shrugged when asked about his new life in Sweden. “I had no choice,” he said. “It was too hard, too dangerous in Mosul.”2 From his swollen eyes it was clear that he missed his country—his friends, his extended family, Iraqi food, and familiar places. There was little joy in his face as he talked about life in Rinkeby. In a staid tone he muttered to Karim that his job was “okay” but “hard.” Once more his boss walked by and uttered a barely audible injunction into Amir’s ear. Amir said he had high hopes when the American-led coalition invaded Iraq in 2003. Finally, he thought, the country would be rid of the brutal Saddam Hussein. But he remembered the fear that he and his family experienced as bombs shattered many buildings in his neighbourhood: Everybody was so scared, so frightened when the bombs began to fall. Many people were killed, many homes were destroyed... They hit targets but many of the bombs destroyed neighbourhoods. Many, many people were killed. You could see bodies in the street.

Electricity and water supplies were cut off after the bombing started, and with that the initial feelings of euphoria turned first to confusion, then disillusionment, and finally anger. Amir recalled: When the American soldiers came I thought it would be better than before. But they began to treat us badly. There was no food and no water, and we had no money... We were all so hungry and thirsty. They kept stopping people, always asking us questions like: ‘Where are you going? What are you doing?’ At first my father welcomed them. We were happy that Saddam Hussein had gone because it would be good for us. Life would be better. But we saw things. The American soldiers stole many things from houses and other places. I saw this with my own eyes. I saw trucks

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taking sand from Mosul. I still don’t know why. Big trucks, they took a lot of sand. We wanted to look but it was forbidden for us to look at what they were doing. And when they talked to us they say “fuck you” or “go back,” pointing their guns at us. When people went to ask for food they were told to shut up... These things made us feel very angry. We began to turn against the Americans because they gave us nothing. They were okay with the children, but not with us. They gave sweets to the kids.

At this point in the retelling of his story, Amir’s boss reappeared and ordered him back to work. Amir pulled his woolly hat over his ears and sped off. The next day he was not at the stall. Thousands of Iraqis live in the nearby Ronna district of Soedertaelje, an industrial town about 35km southwest of Stockholm. The assemblage of shops and apartments that make up Ronna’s commercial hub also includes two cavernous community centers, one ostensibly for people from Syria and the other for a mixed group of Middle Easterners. The owner of the Syrian establishment rolled his eyes as he pointed to the other club, saying simply, “Problem, problem.” In the latter club there were 20 or so men huddled around tables playing cards. Their collective, deep concentration was sometimes punctuated by guffaws of joy as a winner emerged. We headed inside. At one table there were men from Lebanon, Turkey, Syria and Iraq. The man from Iraq, in his early 60s, sat quietly in a neat suit observing the proceedings. “Where are you from?” asked our translator. The question was greeted with surprise. “Baghdad,” he said.3 “When did you come to Sweden?” The man shifted in his seat. “I came in 2003, from Iraq. I lived there for most of my life, but now I live in

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Sweden.” The man was expressionless as he went on to say how he was forced to flee Iraq in the face of the US invasion: It was very bad. They bombed everything. It was all destroyed. We saw many dead people, many buildings destroyed by the bombing. We didn’t know what to do, so we just left. We lost everything, all our savings, our home, and my possessions. We leave our friends and family behind.

Others around the table seem oblivious, as if they have heard it all before. “At least under the Saddam government there was order,” he said. “Not like now where there is chaos, everything is destroyed and nothing works. I hear this from people in Iraq. I phone them, they tell me these things. It is very bad for them.” When asked if he would ever go back, he replied: “I am too old now for this. I have lost everything. There is nothing to return to. I have some of my family here—that is enough. There is peace here in Sweden, not like in Iraq. We cannot go back.” Abruptly, he pushed himself away from the table, rose, and slowly left the club; nothing is said to him, no goodbyes. The card games continued. In late 2007, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) conducted a survey to determine the level of trauma experienced since 2003 by Iraqi refugees living abroad—who numbered roughly 2.4 million at that time. Of the 754 Iraqis interviewed in Syria, every single person—100 percent—experienced a traumatic event in Iraq. According to the survey: Seventy-seven per cent of the Iraqi refugees who were interviewed reported being affected by air bombardments and shelling or rocket attacks. Eighty per cent reported witnessing a shooting. Sixty-eight per cent said they experienced interrogation or harassment by militias or

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other groups, including receiving death threats, while sixteen per cent have been tortured. Seventy-two per cent were eyewitnesses to a car bombing and seventy-five per cent know someone who has been killed.4

Every Iraqi we spoke with reported similar events: houses bombed, possessions lost, children kidnapped, lives destroyed. “Americans—when they hear one shot—even if it’s like 10 kilometers away—they’ll just open fire on everything,” said Laith as he lit a cigarette with the small red heating coils warming his cramped two-room house in East Amman, Jordan.5 His two young sons—then aged seven and nine—were sitting on frayed mats on the cold concrete floor. It was January 2008, and the boys wore gloves and hats to fend off the winter chill. Laith’s pregnant wife looked on, pacing nervously as her husband spoke. “We left in October 2004,” he said, as he exhaled and looked at his boys. “I had a shop out on the streets in Baquba,” he continued. “There was groups of fundamentalists that started fighting the Americans, and they escaped somehow, and the Americans opened fire. The shop burned down.” Compensation was impossible to come by: I was supposed to get money from the Iraqi government. The Iraqi government says, “It’s the Americans’ fault so you go to the Americans and they will compensate you.” How am I going to reach the Americans? How can I possibly talk to any Americans, or enter any American buildings? Because if the Islamic militias would see this, they’ll think I am an American sympathizer and think I am working with them. So then I’d be in bigger trouble. So everything is gone.

Laith and his family stayed in Baghdad with his parents for one month, then came to Jordan. “Iraq is going from bad to worse. I never want to go back. The country will be

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divided,” he said. “We’ve always lived in war,” he added, while glancing at his children, now huddled around the small heater. “The war didn’t start in 2003. Before that America used to bomb now and then—’98, ’91. Over 20 years of war.”

Interests Inimical to Our Own On August 2, 1990, at 2:00 a.m., Iraq launched Special Forces units and four Republican Guard divisions into Kuwait—the small, neighboring emirate with the world’s fifth largest proven oil reserves. US reaction was swift. “Our jobs, our way of life, our own freedom would all suffer if control of the world’s great oil reserves fell into the hands of Saddam Hussein,” said President George H.W. Bush on August 15, 1990.6 Five days later, Bush issued National Security Directive 45 to his chiefs of staff: “US Policy in Response to the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait.” Channeling the principles of the Carter Doctrine, it began: US interests in the Persian Gulf are vital to the national security. These interests include access to oil and the security and stability of key friendly states in the region. The United States will defend its vital interests in the area, through the use of US military force if necessary and appropriate, against any power with interests inimical to our own.7

Willingness to use military force against Iraq was a clear break from former US policy. Saddam Hussein was a creation of the US—a regional strongman charged with checking Soviet and Iranian influence in the Middle East. Saddam’s ties with the CIA stretched back to the early days of the Cold War. In 1959, Saddam was part of a six-man team recruited by the CIA and tasked with the assassination

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of Prime Minister General Abd al Karim Qasim. Earlier that year, Qasim withdrew from the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact, a coalition also including Turkey, Britain, Iran and Pakistan. Qasim, who had overthrown the Iraqi monarchy in July 1958, also began purchasing arms from the USSR and promoted communists within his party. When the assassination attempt failed, the CIA helped Saddam escape Iraq and placed him in an apartment in Beirut, then Cairo. The CIA remained in contact with Saddam as the Baath Party seized power in 1963. Following the coup, Saddam returned to Iraq and the CIA provided him with lists of suspected communists. The men, according to UPI’s Richard Sale, “were then jailed, interrogated, and summarily gunned down.”8 In turn, Saddam became head of the feared al-Jihaz a-Khas, the secret intelligence apparatus of the Baath Party, then general of the Iraqi armed forces, and finally, in July 1979, president. Under Saddam, the US-Iraq relationship became even closer. During the 1980–88 Iran–Iraq war, the US sought to produce a stalemate to prevent one of the two states from dominating the region. The CIA regularly briefed Iraqi intelligence officials with satellite imagery of Iranian positions. According to US Commerce Department files obtained by Newsweek, the Reagan administration supplied Iraqis with helicopters and video surveillance technology, and permitted sales of “highly toxic” pesticides and “bacteria/fungi/protozoa”—precursor elements of biological weapons.9 On December 20, 1983, Donald Rumsfeld, then special envoy of President Ronald Reagan, met with Saddam Hussein. According to a US State Department cable, Rumsfeld “conveyed the President’s greetings and expressed his pleasure at being in Baghdad.” According

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to one press account, the visit was organized “to improve relations between their two countries.” Months later, Iraq employed chemical weapons against Iranian targets— the first of more than 100 gas attacks between 1984 and 1988. US helicopters, according to officials interviewed by Newsweek, were used to spray poison gas on the Kurds. When television footage emerged of an Iraqi chemical assault on Iranian-occupied Halabja in Iraq’s Kurdish north, the White House was forced to make a rare public statement. The US condemned Iraq’s use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), but conditioned it by stating that there were “indications”—never proven—that Iran had used chemical weapons too.10 The deployment of chemical weapons did little to stem US support for Saddam at the time. In April 1990, a delegation of US senators traveled to Iraq, instructed by George H.W. Bush to further improve relations between the two countries. The group—which included then Republican leader Robert Dole and assistant minority leader Senator Alan Simpson—flew into Baghdad and then, via an Iraqi Air Force plane, to Mosul for talks. The senators, according to US officials, were “eager to promote American farm and business interests.” Dole later told reporters the meeting with Hussein was “excellent.”11 Three months later, on July 25, 1990, Hussein summoned to his palace April Glaspie, the United States ambassador to Iraq. According to an Iraqi transcript, later disputed by US officials, Glaspie noted the buildup of Iraqi troops on the Kuwaiti border and informed Hussein that “we have no opinion on the Arab–Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.” Glaspie added: “I was in the American Embassy in Kuwait during the late ’60s. The

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instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America.” Saddam invaded Kuwait two weeks later. Shifting geopolitical balances prompted the US to act militarily against its long-time ally. By 1990, the USSR was close to dissolving. According to Phyllis Bennis of the progressive Institute for Policy Studies: “The US wanted a way to make clear that, whatever happened to the Soviet Union, the US would remain the hyper power, the dominant force in the Middle East and throughout the world. The invasion of Kuwait provided a pretext to do that.”12 Unlike in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion, the US secured UN approval for its 1991 assault. In the Security Council, the US pushed for passage of Resolution 660, demanding that “Iraq withdraw immediately and unconditionally” from Kuwait. On August 6, the US brokered passage of Resolution 661, which banned the sale of all commodities to Iraq except “supplies intended strictly for medical purposes, and, in humanitarian circumstances, foodstuffs,” until Iraq’s withdrawal. Finally, on November 29, the US successfully lobbied for UN Resolution 678. This resolution gave Iraq a withdrawal deadline of January 15, 1991, and authorized “all necessary means to uphold and implement Resolution 660.”13 As the deadline neared, Yevgeny Primakov, the Soviet Union’s Middle East envoy, brokered a last-minute withdrawal agreement with Iraqi officials in Baghdad. Primakov announced that “Saddam had conceded the key point that Iraq would have to withdraw from Kuwait.” According to the Independent, the plan was “unceremoniously buried” by the White House.14 National Security

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Directive 54, dated January 15, 1991, reveals why the peace deal was scrapped. It began: Access to Persian Gulf oil and the security of key friendly states in the area are vital to US national security... The United States remains committed to defending its vital interests in the region, if necessary through the use of military force, against any power with interests inimical to its own. Iraq, by virtue of its unprovoked invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, and its subsequent brutal occupation, is clearly a power with interests inimical to our own.15

On January 17, 1991, a US-led coalition of 34 countries began aerial bombardment of Iraq and an assault on Iraqi troops inside Kuwait. The invasion force consisted primarily of troops from the US (700,000), Saudi Arabia (100,000), the United Kingdom (45,400), Egypt (33,600) and France (14,600). Countries like Argentina, Denmark, and Hungary played a supporting role, offering services related to transport and logistics. The offensive, coined Operation Desert Storm, ostensibly targeted the Hussein regime but resulted in massive human suffering for Iraqi citizens—rich, poor, and all those in between. During the 42-day war, 88,500 tons of ordnance—over 210,000 individual bombs— were dropped on Kuwait and Iraq. According to journalist Geoff Simons, author of The Scourging of Iraq: Sanctions, Law and Natural Justice, this is a payload equivalent to seven Hiroshima-size atomic bombs. “For the period of the war,” he wrote, “Iraq was subjected to the equivalent of one atomic bomb a week, a scale of destruction that has no parallels in the history of warfare. Moreover, whereas the horrendous destructive potential of an atomic bomb is focused on a single site the missiles and bombs ranged over the whole of Iraq.”16

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Mouths Open Swallowing Bombs Nuha al-Radi, an Iraqi painter and ceramist, found refuge in her family’s country house north of Baghdad during the 1991 bombing. Daughter of a wealthy Iraqi diplomat, Nuha lived in India as a child and learned English in Delhi and Simla. She worked and exhibited in Beirut, but fled to Iraq during the Lebanese civil war. Her diary—first published in the literary journal, Granta, and later by Random House— is a unique English-language narrative of the invasion.17 Nuha’s deeply personal account of the destruction of Baghdad foreshadows the eyewitness accounts of the second Gulf War written by Iraqi bloggers in 2003. Nuha al-Radi began her diary on January 17, 1991—day one of the US-led assault. She wrote: I woke up at 3 a.m. to exploding bombs and Salvador Dali, my dog, frantically chasing around the house, barking furiously. I went out on the balcony. Salvador was already there, staring up at a sky lit by the most extraordinary firework display. The noise was beyond description. I ventured outside with Salvador to put out the garage light—we were both very nervous. Almost immediately we lost all electricity, so I need not have bothered. The phones also went dead. We are done for, I think: a modern nation cannot fight without electricity and communications. Thank heavens for our ration of Pakistani matches. With the first bomb, Ma and Needles’s windows shattered, those facing the river, and one of poor Bingo’s pups was killed in the garden by flying glass—our first war casualty.18

National Security Directive 54 called for military operations designed to “destroy Iraq’s command, control, and communications capabilities.” While achieving these

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ends, it continued, “every reasonable effort” should be taken “to reduce collateral damage incident to military attacks, taking special precautions to minimize civilian casualties and damage to non-military economic infrastructure, energy-related facilities, and religious sites.” Contrary to this guidance, the US Air Force dropped about 1200 tons of explosives on 28 oil targets in Iraq—bringing all refinement to a halt. Iraq’s eleven major power plants and 119 substations were also destroyed, knocking out over 90 percent of electricity production nationwide.19 A US Air Force planning officer later explained to the Washington Post the reasoning behind infrastructure targeting: People say, “You didn’t recognize that it was going to have an effect on water or sewage.” Well, what were we trying to do with [United Nationsapproved economic] sanctions—help out the Iraqi people? No. What we were doing with the attacks on infrastructure was to accelerate the effect of the sanctions.20

By all accounts, the plan worked. Nuha’s normal life unraveled following the loss of electricity. On January 20, 1991, she wrote: Mundher Baig has made a generator for his house using precious petrol. Ten of us stood gaping in wonder at this machine and the noise it made. Only four days have passed since the start of the war but already any mechanical thing seems totally alien.

By January 26, 1991, deep disillusionment had set in: “Read my Lips,” today is the tenth day of the war and we are still here. Where is your three-to-ten-days-swift-and-clean kill? Mind you, we are ruined. I don’t think I could set foot in the West again. Maybe I’ll go to India: they have a high tolerance level and will not shun Iraqis.

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Shockwaves killed scores of birds that once filled Nuha’s garden. “Hundreds, if not thousands, have died in the orchard. Lonely survivors fly about in a distracted fashion,” she wrote. The destruction intensified as the air war dragged on. After 22 days Nuha confided: There is a sameness about the days now. I saw the Jumhuriya Bridge today; it’s incredibly sad to see a bombed bridge—a murderous action, for it destroys a link. The sight affects everyone that sees it; many people cry.

Four days later she added: “Both the Martyrs’ and the Suspension Bridges have been hit. I feel very bitter towards the West.” On February 13, 1991, two F-117 stealth bombers dropped laser-guided “smart” bombs on a civilian shelter in the Amiriya neighborhood of Baghdad. The first 2000-pound bomb gouged a hole in the concrete shelter, while the second bomb exploded within. More than 200 Iraqi women and children were incinerated in the blasts. The US Air Force later claimed that the bunker was used as a “military command-and-control center,” despite site markings to the contrary.21 On February 14, Nuha responded: A turning point in the war. They hit a shelter, the one in Amiriya. They thought it was going to be full of a party of bigwigs, not women and children. Whole families were wiped out. The Americans insist that these women and children were put there deliberately. I ask you, is that logical? One can imagine the conversation at Command Headquarters going something like this, “Well, I think the Americans will hit the Amiriya shelter next, let’s fill it full with women and children.”

Nuha’s bitterness grew after the Amiriya bombing. In an entry dated February 25 and 26, she complained:

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Nights and days full of noise, no sleep possible. For forty days and nights, a Biblical figure, we have stood with our mouths open swallowing bombs. We didn’t have anything to do with the Kuwaiti takeover, yet we are paying the price for it. We are living in an Indian movie, or better still we are like Peter Sellers in The Party, refusing to die, rising up again and again for a last gasp on the bugle. Indian movies never really end.

Finally, on February 27, 1991, bombing stopped. She noted wryly: Defeat is a terrible feeling. This morning, the forty-second day, the war stopped. They kept at us all night long, just in case we had a couple of gasps left in us. It was the worst night of bombing of the whole war. Nobody slept a wink. I think they dropped all the left-over ammunition.

Iraqi losses were estimated at $232 billion—a figure six times Iraqi’s yearly GDP.22 The war claimed 2500-3500 Iraqi civilians outright, the majority from errant bomb strikes, as up to 70 percent of all bombs missed their intended targets. Using conventional bombs, cluster munitions, napalm, and, in particular, thermobaric fuel bombs, allied bombers achieved “nuclear-like levels of destruction without arousing popular revulsion,” noted US defense policy expert Michael Klare.23 One of the first in-country assessments of the damage was taken by then UN Under-Secretary-General, Martti Ahtisaari, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008. After surveying the damage, he wrote: Nothing that we had seen or read had quite prepared us for the particular form of devastation which has now befallen the country. The recent conflict has wrought near-apocalyptic results upon the economic infrastructure of what has been, until January 1991, a rather highly urbanized and mechanized society. Now, most means of modern life support have been destroyed or rendered tenuous. Iraq has, for some time to come,

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been relegated to a pre-industrial age, but with all the disabilities of postindustrial dependency on an intensive use of energy and technology.24

Ahtisaari found that 83 road bridges had been destroyed while 9000 homes were damaged beyond repair. Of these, 2500 were in Baghdad and 1900 in Basra. This created, he said, a newly homeless population of up to 72,000 persons. As a result of US bombing, all viable fuel sources, sewage treatment, water pumping plants, power plants, and communications were “essentially defunct.”25 Dr. Leon Eisenberg, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, noted that the destruction of Iraq’s power plants “brought its entire system of water purification and distribution to a halt, leading to epidemics of cholera, typhoid fever, and gastroenteritis, particularly among children.” A United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) survey later found that from January through August 1991 there were approximately 47,000 excess deaths among children less than five years of age. Deaths spiked due to rampant disease spurred by poor water quality compounded by a broken health care system. Author and activist Milan Rai later concluded: “Deliberately destroying the means of containing water-borne disease is equivalent to the use of a biological weapon. It seems fair to say, then, that 47,000 children were killed in Iraq in the first eight months of 1991 by biological warfare instigated by Britain and the United States.”26

The Price of Sanctions On April 3, 1991, UN Resolution 687 held strict sanctions in place despite the fact that Iraqi troops had fully withdrawn from Kuwait by March of that year. The embargo was

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to remain until the “destruction, removal, or rendering harmless, under international supervision” of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. While WMD was the declared target of these sanctions, only an Iraqi regime change was capable of satisfying the US and its British allies. UK ambassador Sir David Hannay stated in the Security Council that it would “in fact prove impossible for Iraq to rejoin the community of civilised nations while Saddam Hussein remains in power.” Robert M. Gates, then deputy national security advisor to George H.W. Bush, said in May 1991 that Saddam’s leadership will never be accepted by the world community, and, therefore, Iraqis will pay the price while he remains in power. All possible sanctions will be maintained until he is gone. Any easing of sanctions will be considered only when there is a new government.27

The Clinton White House continued this policy. “Sanctions will be there until the end of time or as long as he [Saddam] lasts,” noted Bill Clinton in 1997. In 1998, only weeks after passage of the Iraq Liberation Act, a law that appropriated funds to Iraqi opposition groups and declared the removal of Saddam Hussein official US policy, Clinton ordered four days of US air strikes across Iraq in an effort to further “degrade” Iraqi capabilities.28 Nuha al-Radi’s experiences personify the human toll of sanctions. In late 1994 she restarted her diary after a three-year pause. By this time, inflation in Iraq was rampant. On November 4, 1994 she recorded: A lot of talk about food and prices. An egg costs 60 dinars—even during the war a dozen eggs only cost 4 dinars! My new car battery is going to cost 16,000 dinars. Cars crawl round the streets of Baghdad, their tyres as smooth as babies’ bottoms—not a ridge left on them. People are living

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by stealing and cheating. Leila and Hatem had all four tyres stolen. Their car was propped up on bricks and parked at their front door—the thieves also took their washing off the line in the garden.29

Nuha also grew increasingly concerned about her own health, and the health of other Iraqis. In particular, she spoke of the effects of controversial American depleted uranium (DU) weaponry. DU is a radioactive waste product of the nuclear industry—a byproduct of uranium enrichment for nuclear reactor fuel. For years it was stockpiled in sites across the US until its unique toughness was exploited for military use. DU munitions can pierce most armors, given that it is 1.7 times denser than lead. However, DU is controversial not because of its strength, but for what it leaves behind. Up to 70 percent of its mass burns up on impact when DU hits its target. The fine residue can be carried by the wind, then inhaled and absorbed into humans, animals, and even plants. The radioactive dust—which has a half-life of 4.5 billion years—emits alpha, beta, and gamma radiation, and is believed to cause an array of serious life-threatening health problems. According to former army physician and critic of DU weapons, Dr. Doug Rokke, health effects from DU exposure include reactive airway disease, neurological abnormalities, kidney stones, chronic kidney pain, rashes, vision loss, lymphoma, skin and organ cancer, neuropsychological disorders, sexual dysfunction and birth defects.30 DU weapons were first used by the US during the 1991 Gulf War—an estimated 286 tons of DU munitions were dropped. About 30 percent of the 700,000 US troops deployed in the Gulf War now claim to suffer health effects consistent with that of DU exposure. The toll on Iraqis was reportedly far greater. According to the UN Committee on

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the Rights of the Child, in 1999 Iraqi researchers found nationwide “that uranium, which affected the blood cells, had a serious impact on health: the number of cases of leukemia had increased considerably, as had the incidence of fetal deformities.”31 In mid November 1994 Nuha discussed the widespread effects of DU she had observed first-hand: Everyone seems to be dying of cancer. Every day one hears about another acquaintance or friend of a friend dying. How many more die in hospitals that one does not know? Apparently over thirty per cent of Iraqis have cancer, and there are lots of kids with leukemia.

Even cockroaches were seemingly affected by DU. On May 19, 1995 she mused: “Killed a hunchback cockroach today. If the cockroaches are becoming malformed, what could be happening to us? It had a curved back and looked like a walking arch.” The effects of UN sanctions on the Iraqi health system compounded the rise in illness. Iraq had previously had one of the strongest free public health care systems in the Middle East. According to Dr. W. Kreisel of the World Health Organization, prior to the invasion malnutrition was virtually not seen, as households had easy and affordable access to a balanced dietary intake. Health care services were guaranteed by an extensive network of well-equipped, well-supplied and well-staffed health facilities. The access of patients to higher levels of care was easy and effortless, supported as it was by a distributed network of secondary and tertiary hospitals/institutions. Ambulances and emergency services were well developed and benefited from a properly maintained network of roads and telecommunications.32

The health sector was in complete disarray by 1995. On February 17, 1995, Nuha recorded:

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Gynecologists are reusing disposable gloves, just dipping them in Dettol, same with disposable syringes. The anesthetic that is used has come as gifts from various countries, different brands, and no one knows the strengths or what dosage to give patients—one woman took fifteen hours to wake up from an anesthetic injection after a Caesarean operation. Surgical thread is some old-fashioned stuff from Pakistan that takes five to eight months to dissolve and causes infections and complications. Anyone over fifty years old is told that there are no medicines; doctors want to keep what little there is for younger patients.

On June 3, 1995, Nuha described how surgeons no longer used gloves. “There are none in the country, and the dead have to be buried immediately because there are no working freezers in the hospitals.” Spare parts were few, as the US, aided by the Australian Navy, maintained a strict blockade on the beleaguered country, while the UK enforced no-fly zones in Iraq’s north and south.33 The sanctions’ toll was enormous—especially on children. A 1999 UNICEF/Iraqi Ministry of Health study revealed that 21 percent of Iraqi children under five were underweight, 20 percent were stunted due to chronic malnutrition, and nine percent were emaciated. A 2000 World Food Program survey found at least 800,000 Iraqi children under the age of five to be “chronically malnourished.”34 These high rates persisted despite the UN Oil for Food program. Initiated in 1996, the program permitted Iraq to sell oil in exchange for humanitarian goods. But according to Denis J. Halliday, UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq from 1997 to 1998: Of the $20 billion that has been provided through the ‘oil-for-food’ programme, about a third, or $7 billion, has been spent on UN ‘expenses’, reparations to Kuwait and assorted compensation claims. That leaves $13 billion available to the Iraqi government. If you divide that figure by the

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population of Iraq, which is 22 million, it leaves some $190 per head of population per year over 3 years—that is pitifully inadequate.35

Halliday resigned from his role at the UN, declaring that the sanctions amounted to “genocide.” His successor, Hans Van Sponeck, also quit in protest. According to Van Sponeck, humanitarian supplies permitted via the Oil for Food program were not enough to meet the basic needs of Iraqis. People were starving despite the fact that each month over 90 percent of all food, medicines and other humanitarian supplies were successfully distributed by the Iraqi government.36 Between 1991 and 1998, UNICEF estimated that up to 500,000 Iraqis under five had died due to the combined effects of war, sanctions, and a bankrupt Iraqi health care system, while Iraqi epidemiologists placed the overall death toll at 1.2 million lives.37 As noted by Edward Said in 2000: For almost a full decade, an inhuman campaign of sanctions—the most complete ever in recorded history—has destroyed Iraq as a modern state, decimated its people, and ruined its agriculture, its educational and health care systems, as well as its entire infrastructure. All this has been done by the United States and United Kingdom, misusing United Nations resolutions against innocent civilians.38

Taken to task for the bloodshed by Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes, then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright flippantly deflected responsibility. “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” asked Stahl. “I think this is a very hard choice,” responded Albright, “but the price—we think the price is worth it.”39

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Fear and Flight On May 22, 2003, UN sanctions were finally lifted by the Security Council. “Now that Iraq has been liberated, the United Nations should lift sanctions on that country,” said George W. Bush ahead of the vote. With sanctions removed and Hussein gone, Bush promised that “the lives of Iraqi people will be better than anything they have known for generations.”40 Reality proved quite different. Ahmed is half Sunni, half Shia—a “Sushi,” in his own words. He met us in February 2008 at our cramped hotel in sprawling Amman to tell us his story. Then only 21, Ahmed spoke unflinchingly about his life in Iraq. His story unfolded over sweetened black tea as the winter sun set over Amman’s hilly snow-capped skyline. “I was born in a war—the first Gulf War. And we survived ’91 and ’98. So for me, war was something that was going to pass,” he said.41 In 2003, “we thought they were going to change Saddam, and that was great. That’s it, nothing else. We thought only one missile to his house and he is dead. It turned out to be something really different.” The US launched Operation Iraqi Freedom without backing from the UN Security Council—an act roundly criticized as illegal under international law—in the early hours of March 20, 2003.42 “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” noted former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, one of the few Bush Administration insiders to later speak candidly about the war’s true aims. Former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill later outlined the administration’s fixation with Iraqi oil. On January 30, 2001, during the first National

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Security Council meeting under George W. Bush, O’Neill recalled that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke at length about taking out the Hussein regime and assuming control over the country’s vast oil wealth—the world’s second largest proven reserves after Saudi Arabia. “Imagine what the region would look like without Saddam and with a regime that’s aligned with US interests. It would change everything in the region and beyond. It would demonstrate what US policy is all about,” said Rumsfeld. Documents prepared that day by the Defense Intelligence Agency had catalogued Iraq’s oil fields and even listed US corporations that the DIA believed would be interested in exploiting Iraqi oil.43 While such discussions took place in private, the public case for war hinged on destroying alleged weapons of mass destruction and removing a genocidal regime. In the lead-up and initial aftermath of the war, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell and press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan made at least 935 demonstrably false statements on 532 separate occasions about the threat posed by Hussein.44 While one of its stated pretexts was to help the Iraqi people, they would become the principal victims of the US-led assault. Ahmed and his family took refuge in Damascus during the initial bombing campaign. “My father is diabetic, so we couldn’t let him stay in Baghdad because of the shock,” he explained. “So we left when the war started. The first day of war was the first day of leaving Baghdad.” Ahmed and his family returned in late 2003, believing the worst to be over. But on December 13, 2003, the date that Saddam

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Hussein was captured, Ahmed realized that deep fractures had formed in Iraq along sectarian lines: The day they caught Saddam I was at my friend’s house, having a private class. When they caught him, everyone with a gun started to shoot in the sky. It was something really strange for me. They were objecting. In Adhamiya, they were [Saddam] supporters. They started to walk in the street and shoot—people I don’t know coming into my neighborhood, who came from near places. Strange people shooting—like a privacy violation. Do I really want to live here?

By 2004 his hometown had changed completely. “In Adhamiya, it was completely controlled by al Qaeda. So if you have a grocery, and you put tomato and cucumber together, it’s haram. Because cucumber in Arabic is male, and tomato is female. So salad is forbidden.” Ice was also banned. “If you have a factory to make ice, then you will be killed. Because in the age of the prophet, there was no ice.” Ahmed laughed nervously, clearly embarrassed by what he had told us. “I am a Muslim, but I am not like that. But everyone thinks Muslims are like that, not like me. We have nothing to do with being extremists,” he said. Ahmed, now living and attending university in Amman, was nearly kidnapped in front of his home in Adhamiya. “I finished high school [in May 2004], then went to Jordan for summer holiday. The night I returned to Baghdad, they tried to kidnap me four hours after I arrived,” said Ahmed. He continued: I came out of my house to see my friends—this was September 2004. Just in my street. A car came at night—there are no lights of course. There are three in the car. Me and my friend were standing, his father is a doctor also. So someone asked—“Do you know where Abu Ahmed lives?”

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The question struck Ahmed as odd. “The moment he said, ‘Where is the house of Ahmed’s father,’ they opened the doors. I really was prepared, so I ran to my neighbor’s house that I was standing by.” At the door, Ahmed hesitated. “The problem is that my largest fear is of dogs. And they have a dog there. So in a moment I was like, ‘Which is worse?’ And I knocked on the door—and they opened it for me.” Ahmed’s friend also narrowly escaped: The men ran after my friend because he stood two seconds more than me. I immediately got to the house. It was like two meters away from me. My friend ran to another house so he was the center of attention. And he got into the house then the guys drove off. Then all the people from the street came out with their AK-47s and they took me home.

Ahmed was safe, but shaken. “It was a turning point,” he said. Days later he fled to Jordan. Fear was palpable on the road to Baghdad’s airport. “In the cab, I didn’t say anything. I only wanted to get to the airport,” he recalled. The airport road was a popular target for insurgents—roadside bombs being their weapons of choice. Neither he nor the driver said a word to each other as the car snaked its way past dozens of checkpoints and past the burnt-out remains of cars and trucks. Suddenly, there was a large boom. “The muffler had a crack in it—it sounded like a gun,” Ahmed recalled. “There was a big sound, then we looked at each other, and started to laugh.”

Online Witnesses Young, technology-savvy Iraqis like Ahmed use social networking websites like Facebook and MySpace to keep in touch with friends and family left behind in Iraq. They

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also read Iraqi blogs. Rarely highlighted by Western media, these blogs provide a platform for Iraqis to speak out and share personal truths about their lives and the complex events shaping their country. “Let me tell you one thing first,” Salam Pax wrote after a six-week blogging hiatus during the height of the 2003 invasion: War sucks big time. Don’t let yourself ever be talked into having one waged in the name of your freedom. Somehow when the bombs start dropping or you hear the sound of machine guns at the end of your street you don’t think about your “imminent liberation” anymore.45

Salam Pax—a pseudonym meaning “peace” in both Arabic (salam) and in Latin (pax)—was Iraq’s first, and most famous, blogger. Pax’s mastery of English, his Western sensibilities (he is both secular and gay), plus his unwillingness to pull punches when opining on both Saddam’s regime and the Bush Administration, earned him millions of readers across the globe. He was the “Anne Frank of the war... and its Elvis,” wrote Slate’s Peter Maas, for whom Pax worked as a translator in 2003.46 The Iraqi blogosphere grew in earnest from one site in 2002, that of the Baghdad-based Salam Pax, to well over 200 unique blogs in English, Arabic, or both. Issues important to Iraqis are incessantly debated online—viewpoints across the political spectrum are represented. Negotiations in late 2008, for example, over the American/Iraqi Status of Forces Agreement, outlining continued US troop presence, spurred lively debate online. One neoconservative Iraqi blogger, Mohammed Fadil of Iraq the Model, argued that the agreement

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will mark the beginning of a time in which Iraq is officially a partner of the US, as it will join Iraq and the US in a new relationship that serves the national interests of both countries. Above all, it will be a major boost for the effort in the war on terror as it will guarantee that Iraq will not fall prey to extremists. It will ensure that Iraq becomes a barrier against the aspirations of extremists, not a vessel that conveys them. In my opinion this treaty will set the foundations for a new Middle East ripe for transformation and for joining the free world.47

A strident anti-occupation blogger known as Hammorabi took a different view: The American pact is nothing but humiliation to the Iraqis. This is against the interest and the sovereignty of the Iraqi people and no one should put himself in a position to sign it. In fact such pact with the Americans who destroyed Iraq since 1991 and killed millions of its children by two wars and 12 years barbaric sanction followed by occupation, such pact is nothing but an aggression not against Iraq alone but against Islam and other Muslims.48

Passionate, quirky, somber, funny, and tragic—the posts of Iraqi bloggers reflect the innumerable voices of Iraq. Taken together, their postings comprise a mosaic of a country first on the brink of war, then under assault, and finally in ruins. By interacting with Iraqi narratives online, documentarians Steve Connors and Molly Bingham wrote that Westerners can “glimpse the source of the bitterness that the Iraqis taste.”49 The writings of Salam Pax are a great place to start. Salam launched his first blog in the months before the war. In July 2002, Pax, then a 29-year-old architect, created a blog as a means of keeping in touch with his good friend Raed Jarrar, who was studying in Jordan at the time. As Pax later explained to the Guardian:

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To tell you the truth, sharing with the world wasn’t really that high on my top five reasons to start a blog. It was more about sharing with Raed... He is a lousy email writer; you just don’t expect any answers from him. He will answer the next time you see him. So instead of writing emails and then having to dig them up later it would all be there on the blog. So Where is Raed? started. The URL used to be where_is_raed.blogspot. com, just a silly blog for me and Raed. I never worried about the people monitoring the web finding out, it was just silly stuff.50

What started as a “silly” communiqué between friends about movies and sex blossomed into a web diary fixated on the looming threat of war. A posting from October 12, 2002 reflected Pax’s growing sense of alarm. He began that post with an excerpt from a New York Times article about American plans for post-Saddam Iraq. “The White House is developing a detailed plan to install an American-led military government in Iraq if the United States topples Saddam Hussein,” wrote David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt.51 Pax responded: Excuse me. But don’t expect me to buy little American flags to welcome the new Colonists. This is really just a bad remake of an even worse movie. and how does it differ from Iraq and Britain circa 1920. the civilized world comes to give us, the barbaric nomadic arabs, a lesson in better living and rid us of all evil (better still get rid of us arabs since we are evil). Yes go ahead just flush all the efforts of people who were sincere in their fight for an independent Iraq down the drain. People fought, demonstrated and died so that my generation gets to see all their dreams turned upside down twice, first by you-know-who [Saddam] and the second time by becoming a colony all over again. God I feel sorry for anyone who has ever had an ideal and fought for it. I feel sorry for every revolutionary Iraqi who wrote a book or a poem and got executed because of it. If they had only

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known that this is going to happen, that it will all just end up being another colony they wouldn’t have bothered. It is much better to spend your time on sex, drugs and belly dancers. Master Sam is going to come and tell you how to run a country properly, and how to spend your money on weapons from him, don’t go buying useless Chinese technology, habibi.52

Pax’s wry musings did not go unnoticed. By late 2002, dozens of other blogs had linked to Pax’s page. A prominent mention of his site by Glenn Reynolds on the blog Instapundit led to a spike in hits. Recalled Pax: I saw my site counter jump from the usual 20 hits a day to 3,000, all coming from Instapundit—we call it experiencing an Insta-lanche (from avalanche) and if I remember correctly it was a post I wrote on October 12 in which I called the American plan to invade Iraq just a colonialist plot. I just flicked the rant switch on, wrote for half an hour and was surprised that the world took notice.53

Pax received a wide range of reactions. Some readers applauded his unflinching views, while others were infuriated. Al Barger, a blogger from Kentucky, wrote an open letter to Pax on November 13, 2002 that typified many of the critiques leveled at him at the time: I appreciate that you aren’t looking forward to military action in your country. However, it is an unfortunate necessity. You know better than I what kind of mass murdering bastard is running your country. Your problem is Saddam, not the US... You and your countrymen have been either unwilling or unable to get rid of him, and he has been and remains a menace to the rest of the world. Therefore WE will have to knock him down.54

Many readers refused to believe Pax was Iraqi, while others thought he worked for the CIA or even Saddam’s

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muhabarat—the much-feared secret police. One user crudely commented on Pax’s site: “Now SHUT THE F--- UP and learn to appreciate us a little!!!” Pax coolly responded: OK, let us all have 5 minutes of silence to do some appreciation. I appreciate the dropping of tons of bombs on my country. I appreciate the depleted uranium used in these bombs. I appreciate the whole policy of dual containment which kept the region constantly on the boil because it was convenient for the US. I appreciate the support the US government shows to all the oppressive governments in the region only to dump them after they have done what was needed of them. I appreciate the US role in the sanctions committee. I appreciate its effort in making me look for surgical gloves and anesthetic in the black market just to get a tooth pulled out, because these supplies are always being vetoed by the sanctions committee. I appreciate the policies of a country which has spent a lot of time and effort to sustain economic sanctions that punished the Iraqi people while it had no effect on Saddam and his power base, turning us into hostages in a political deadlock between the Iraqi government and the US government. I appreciate the role these sanctions had in making a country full of riches so poor. I appreciate watching my professors having to sell their whole personal libraries to survive, and seeing their books being bought by UN staff who take home as souvenirs. I have so much appreciation it is flowing out of my ears.55

In early December 2002, Pax’s blog was cited in a Reuters story picked up by newspapers across the globe. “I totally flipped out,” Pax recalled, realizing that the blog’s popularity could make him a target of the muhabarat. Pax’s brother was furious. “He thought I was a fool to endanger

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the family, which was true,” said Salam. In a fit of paranoia, Salam deleted the original Where is Raed? blog, but weeks later he launched a new version that would eventually earn him the sobriquet of “The Baghdad Blogger,” a best-selling book, and even a movie deal. “I just felt that it was important that among all the weblogs about Iraq and the war there should be at least one Iraqi blog, one single voice: no matter how you view my politics, there was at least someone talking,” he recalled.56 Typical of Pax’s thinking at the time was his December 22, 2002 posting about a New York Times report on a US-selected exile government-in-waiting. “According to opposition members,” wrote Craig S. Smith in the Times, “Washington wants the opposition to enhance its credibility without growing too independent, so that the United States controls Iraq’s political future yet has a legitimizing Iraqi partner ready in the wings in case one is needed after any invasion.” Pax responded: “man this is way too funny, the way everyone is so blatant about it. At least try to be a bit discreet. No need for that eh?, just a bunch of stupid arabs there, they won’t notice the threads moving these puppets.”57 By January 2003, Salam was bombarded by questions about the impending invasion. Asked by a reader whether he would flee Baghdad, Pax shot back: “At this point in my life I care too much about my family and friends to jump ship and go watch it on CNN.”58 He continued to issue his dispatches from Baghdad as war struck. The Guardian reprinted the bulk of his posts, sharing with its readers the observations of the only Iraqi blogger covering the conflict, in English, from inside Baghdad. But while Pax struggled to update his site amid fuel shortages, lack of power and errant bombings, another Iraqi was writing furiously offline.

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Faiza al-Araji, the mother of Raed Jarrar—Pax’s friend to whom the blog was dedicated—kept a written diary of the assault. Faiza, a civil engineer and executive manager of a water treatment company, is a religious Shia with a Sunni husband. In 2004, Raed translated her war diary and posted it online. As Faiza recalled: “I had started writing war diaries in a notebook, then asked Raed, ‘Where should I put them?’ He said, ‘I will create a blog for you.’”59 The war diary of Faiza al-Araji complements Salam Pax’s daily dispatches. Like Nuha al-Radi’s 1991 war journal, Faiza and Salam’s records reveal what life was like for Iraqi citizens on the receiving end of US aggression.60 What follows are five days of war—selected from among the hundreds of entries logged—through the eyes of Faiza and Salam: Thursday, March 20, 2003 FAIZA: We heard the sirens, and the first attack started... after the dawn prayer. I went running to the down floor, everyone was awake. I arranged the breakfast and we enjoyed eating together. We discussed some different topics and laughed. Our family was lucky because we had a satellite receiver that we hide, we watched some news channels, everyone in the world was watching us. Bombing was far way, it didn’t seem to be dangerous, maybe it would be more dangerous next days. News said this is just the beginning, and the next attack will be huge. The evening bombing lasted for more than one hour, I could clearly hear the sound of missiles falling down, and the anti aircraft guns shooting and shooting... My stomach hurts and I feel depressed... How many days are we going to stay like this? Like prisoners... with no life and no work or production... It’s a silly way to solve problems... these wars... When is this stupid movie going to finish and the normal life comes again?

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SALAM: the all clear siren just went on. The bombing would come and go in waves, nothing too heavy and not yet comparable to what was going on in 91. all radio and TV stations are still on and while the air raid began the Iraqi TV was showing patriotic songs and didn’t even bother to inform viewers that we are under attack. at the moment they are re-airing yesterday’s interview with the minister of interior affairs. The sounds of the anti-aircarft artillery is still louder than the booms and bangs which means that they are still far from where we live, but the images we saw on Al Arabia news channel showed a building burning near one of my aunts house, hotel pax was a good idea. we have two safe rooms one with “international media” and the other with the Iraqi TV on. every body is waitingwaitingwaiting. phones are still ok, we called around the city a moment ago to check on friends. Information is what they need. Iraqi TV says nothing, shows nothing. what good are patriotic songs when bombs are dropping Saturday, March 22, 2003 FAIZA: Yesterday’s night was a disaster Explosions were huge, they shook houses and broke windows... missile attacks... Now... we could see the ugly face of the war We went through real terrifying moments; I covered my face with my hands and read some verses of Qur’aan I was frightened to death! The room was shaking, curtains flew in the air after every missile explodes, and there were just few seconds between one missile and the next... I took a sleeping pill, and felt so sleepy... when the bombing went a bit far from our area, Azzam went to prepare dinner, but I refused to leave the room. The whole family sleeps in one room, in the deepest part of our house; far from the street... we called it the safe room. Most of the other families have their safe rooms too... and they sleep together there. We had our dinner in the same room, and I slept on the floor even without washing my hands...

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SALAM: Today the third in the war, we had quite a number of attacks during daytime. Some without air-raid sirens. They probably just gave up on being able to be on time to sound the sirens. Last night, after waves after waves of attacks, they would sound the all-clear siren only to start another raid siren 30 minutes later. The images we saw on TV last night (not Iraqi, jazeera-BBC-Arabiya) were terrible. The whole city looked as if it were on fire. The only thing I could think of was “why does this have to happen to Baghdad.” As one of the buildings I really love went up in a huge explosion I was close to tears. today my father and brother went out to see what happening in the city, they say that it does look that the hits were very precise but when the missiles and bombs explode they wreck havoc in the neighborhood where they fall. Houses near al-salam palace (where the minister Sahaf took journalist) have had all their windows broke, doors blown in and in one case a roof has caved in. I guess that is what is called “collateral damage” and that makes it OK? Sunday, March 30, 2003 FAIZA: Extremely strong night attacks... Our house was shaking all the night, I don’t know what were they bombing. In the early morning the glass our master bedroom was broken. Fortunately, no one is sleeping there now. I felt the pain squeezing my heart, and my face became pale. I went with Azzam to clean and collect the glass fragments... and we put a wood layer instead of the broken glass. The situation of our bed room is very sad, first it was abandoned, and now with broken windows. SALAM: No good news anywhere, no light at the end of the tunnel and the Americans’ advance doesn’t look that reassuring. If we had a mood barometer in the house it would read “to hell with saddam and may he quickly be joined by bush.” No one feels like they should welcome the

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American army. The American government is getting as many curses as the Iraqi. Monday, April 7, 2003 FAIZA: Another morning assult, 7 a.m. . . .The noises of bombardment, machine-gun fire, and war planes. Heavy dust is cloaking the city; I wondered how our house would fare, we didn’t leave the windows tightly shut. In the afternoon, we heard in the news about a multi-tons missile attack on several houses behind the Al-Sa’aa restaurant, they thought that Saddam Hussein had a staff meeting there; perhaps it was another disastrous hit like the Al-Ameriia shelter raid, with so many civilian casualties... but, as we do not leave the house, we hardly know what is happening. Every body is hiding at home... SALAM: I have not been out of the house for the last 3 days. We are now 15 people at “Hotel Pax” although it is not so safe here everybody expects the next move to be on the west/ southwest parts of Baghdad and are telling us we will be the front line. I can only hope when push comes to shove the Americans will not be met with too much resistance and we don’t end up in the cross fire. Tuesday, April 23, 2003 FAIZA: Electricity came yesterday, and then went off. Perhaps it will take a long time to be fixed, and settle to function. The house needs extensive cleaning, carpet, curtains, and mattress wash...I need some help. I went to buy household necessities...the sight of Baghdad is very depressing; it hurt me and broke my heart... SALAM: The irony, during the last couple of weeks in this big media festival called ‘Iraq War’ there is not a single Iraqi voice.

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A conversation overheard by G. while in the Meridian Hotel – the Iraqi media center : Female journalist 1: oh honey how are you? I haven’t seen you for ages. Female journalist 2: I think the last time was in Kabul. Bla bla bla Bla bla bla Female journalist 1: have to run now, see you in Pyongyang then, eh? Female journalist 2: absolutely. Iraq is taken out of the headlines. The search for the next conflict is on. Maybe if it turns out to be Syria the news networks won’t have to pay too much in travel costs.

Although Salam gained notoriety from this gripping account of the 2003 war, his online prominence yielded to a growing cadre of Iraqi bloggers. While he was the only Iraqi blogger in late 2002, by late 2003 there were at least 22 others, writing in English, Arabic or both. By late 2004, this number jumped to at least 66 Iraqi bloggers, by late 2005 there were 112, and by late 2006 there were nearly 200—where the number still hovers today.61 While Pax continues to blog on a new eponymous site, his earlier material on Where is Raed? remains a lasting testimonial to the war’s early carnage. Faiza al-Araji continues to post regularly on A Family in Baghdad, a site created by her son Raed in December 2003. All three of her sons—Raed, Khalid and Majid— have maintained blogs chronicling life after the invasion. In November 2006, after fleeing Iraq earlier that year, Faiza returned to Baghdad following the arrest of Khalid by the Iraqi Ministry of Interior. Back in the capital, she recalled the life she had once lived and the various things she had

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lost. On November 16, 2006, she posted these observations of her old neighbourhood and home: I gave the whole house a sweeping sorry glance. I remembered the war, the chaos, robberies, thefts and assassinations, the immigration of my brother, the owner of the house; a doctor, his fear for himself and his family, my leaving my former house to this one here because the old one was in an area near the Airport Road, the heart of the battle against the occupation, with daily explosions, and broken window glass. Then I remembered the story of my son Khalid’s kidnapping from university, his arrest, being put at the Interior Ministry for twelve days accused of terrorism, for nothing more than having a beard! How this family endured these difficult days, then they let him go because he was innocent, and because we paid a ransom for him, and decided to leave Iraq, like thousands of families did, before and after us... I remembered how the family separated; Khalid studying at a university outside Amman, I see him once a week, Majid studying in Cairo, Raid lives in America to work for Iraq, and I work with different organizations to help the devastated and the displaced from Iraq. I started to burst into tears. My relative came to consol me; Are you crying for the furniture? Because of the dust? Tomorrow, a woman will come to clean the house... I told him through my tears: No, I do not cry for the furniture, let it go to hell. I cry for my country which was shattered, my family which scattered, the Iraqis who were killed, the blood that was shed, and the devastation that spread. All the Iraqis are like me, what happened to them also befell me....62

The sense of loss and anger that permeates Faiza’s work is common across the Iraqi blogosphere. Riverbend, another celebrated Iraqi blogger, wrote passionately about daily life and death in Baghdad. In her first formal entry, on August 17, 2003, she wrote only: “I’m female, Iraqi and

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24. I survived the war. That’s all you need to know. It’s all that matters these days anyway.”63 Riverbend created her blog, Baghdad Burning, upon the advice of Salam Pax, who earlier that year had posted two emails she had sent him. She later explained: I liked the idea of blogging because I was very frustrated with the Western media for telling only half the story in Iraq. No one seemed to know what was going on inside of the country—all the damage and horror Iraqis were facing on a daily basis. In addition to this, blogging proved to be therapeutic. It was a way to vent fears and anger that I couldn’t really express in front of family and friends because it was always necessary to stay strong and, to some extent, positive.64

Riverbend blogged regularly until she left Iraq for Syria in mid 2007. Over the years, she described a country eviscerated by US occupation and the Sunni–Shia civil war it spawned. Like Faiza and Salam, Riverbend and her family gathered in a “safe room”—a small room filled with cushions and pillows. On the first day of the invasion: The faces in the safe room were white with tension. My cousin’s wife sat in the corner, a daughter on either side, her arms around their shoulders, murmuring prayers softly. My cousin was pacing in front of the safe room door, looking grim and my father was trying to find a decent radio station on the small AM/FM radio he carried around wherever he went. My aunt was hyperventilating at this point and my mother sat next to her, trying to distract her with the voice of the guy on the radio talking about the rain of bombs on Baghdad. A seemingly endless 40 minutes later, there was a slight lull in the bombing—it seemed to have gotten further away. I took advantage of the relative calm and went to find the telephone. The house was cold because the windows were open to keep them from shattering. I reached

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for the telephone, fully expecting to find it dead but I was amazed to find a dial tone. I began dialing numbers—friends and relatives. We contacted an aunt and an uncle in other parts of Baghdad and the voices on the other end were shaky and wary. “Are you OK? Is everyone OK?” Was all I could ask on the phone. They were ok... but the bombing was heavy all over Baghdad. Shock and awe had begun.65

Riverbend was branded “anti-American” by some readers in the US for her outspoken views. “Although I hate the American military presence in Iraq in its current form, I don’t even hate the American troops... or wait, sometimes I do,” she wrote in August 2003. While she felt “sympathy seeing them sitting bored and listless on top of their tanks and in their cars—wishing they were somewhere else,” she noted: I hated them on April 11—a cool, gray day: the day our family friend lost her husband, her son and toddler daughter when a tank hit the family car as they were trying to evacuate the house in Al-A’adhamiya district—an area that saw heavy fighting. I hated them on June 3 when our car was pulled over for some strange reason in the middle of Baghdad and we (3 women, a man and a child) were made to get out and stand in a row, while our handbags were rummaged, the men were frisked and the car was thoroughly checked by angry, brisk soldiers. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to put into words the humiliation of being searched. I hated them for two hours on July 13. As we were leaving Baghdad, we were detained with dozens of other cars at a checkpoint in the sweltering, dizzying heat. I hated them the night my cousin’s house was raided—a man with a wife, daughter and two young girls. He was pushed out of the house with his hands behind his head while his wife and screaming daughters were made

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to wait in the kitchen as around 20 troops systematically searched the house, emptying closets, rummaging underwear drawers and overturning toy boxes.66

On July 11, 2006 she received word that a close friend she calls “T.” had been gunned down by a Shia militia in Baghdad’s Jihad quarter. She wrote: It’s difficult to believe T. is really gone... I was checking my email today and I saw three unopened emails from him in my inbox. For one wild, heart-stopping moment I thought he was alive. T. was alive and it was all some horrific mistake! I let myself ride the wave of giddy disbelief for a few precious seconds before I came crashing down as my eyes caught the date on the emails—he had sent them the night before he was killed. One email was a collection of jokes, the other was an assortment of cat pictures, and the third was a poem in Arabic about Iraq under American occupation. He had highlighted a few lines describing the beauty of Baghdad in spite of the war... And while I always thought Baghdad was one of the more marvelous cities in the world, I’m finding it very difficult this moment to see any beauty in a city stained with the blood of T. and so many other innocents...67

In the same posting, Riverbend revisited the question of whether she hated US troops. Following the death of T., plus recent revelations of US torture, mass killings of civilians, and the March 2006 rape by US soldiers of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, murdered along with her family, Riverbend fumed: The pity I once had for foreign troops in Iraq is gone. It’s been eradicated by the atrocities in Abu Ghraib, the deaths in Haditha and the latest news of rapes and killings. I look at them in their armored vehicles and to be honest—I can’t bring myself to care whether they are 19 or 39. I can’t bring myself to care if they make it back home alive. I can’t bring myself to care anymore about the wife or parents or children they left behind. I

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can’t bring myself to care because it’s difficult to see beyond the horrors. I look at them and wonder just how many innocents they killed and how many more they’ll kill before they go home. How many more young Iraqi girls will they rape?68

Read together, Riverbend’s postings on Baghdad Burning constitute a collective obituary for a country destroyed. While many debate the future of Iraq, for some it is now irrelevant. As Riverbend once concluded: A 12-year-old boy was shot in his garden while playing. The Americans say he was caught in the crossfire between them and someone else. His mother was almost tearing her hair out and his father was beating the ground and moaning. He looked ready to kill. People talk about the future and how five years from now, ten years from now, fifty years from now things are going to be better. Some people no longer have a ‘future’. The parents of that boy no longer care about the future of Iraq or the future of America or anything else. They buried their ‘future’ last night. I’m sure the future means as much to them as it does to the parents of the soldiers dying in Iraq on a daily basis. When Bush ‘brought the war to the terrorists’, he failed to mention he wouldn’t be fighting it in some distant mountains or barren deserts: the frontline is our homes... the ‘collateral damage’ are our friends and families.69

2 Refugee Voices

Fadila and Basel focused intently on a small television jammed in the corner of their cramped lounge room. As they watched, gruesome pictures were relayed of dead and injured civilians from a car bombing in a Baghdad marketplace. Fadila knew the area; it was not far from her family’s home. Basel simply shook his head and said, “Terrible, terrible.” Following the report we sat in silence. Having fled Iraq for Jordan in late 2002, then migrating to Australia, the young couple’s ongoing contacts with family in Iraq have been set against daily media reports of suicide bombings, roadside explosions, shootings, torture and kidnappings. Sitting a world away in their modest three-bedroom home in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, amid the din of the television, Fadila and Basel explained the details of their decision to leave Iraq, and told of their lives before and after the 2003 invasion.1 The couple preferred to keep the television tuned loudly to Al Jazeera as we spoke— seemingly hesitant to switch off one of the most immediate and horrifying links between their old and new lives.

Exodus In 2002, neither Fadila, an Iraqi in her late 30s with long, thick brown hair and olive complexion, nor her 54

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tall, dark-eyed husband, Basel, really thought there was a looming war threatening their homeland. “We were not worried, as we thought that the Americans were just talking about war and that this was only a threat,” said Fadila. “We didn’t think they would invade us.” Throughout that year, Fadila and Basel came under increasing pressure from Basel’s parents in Amman to visit Jordan. Fadila said that they were misled, even duped, by Basel’s family into leaving their comfortable life in al Karkh, a wealthy suburb in Baghdad’s west. Basel’s parents rightly believed an attack on Iraq was imminent and sought to protect their son, his wife, and their two young granddaughters. The young couple, married in 1999, left Baghdad in the belief that the visit to Jordan was only a holiday. Basel, then a dental technician, told his colleagues that the trip would be brief. They took nothing with them but their two young children and some winter clothes. They had no savings to help them cope with unexpected crises. Fadila explained: We left to travel to Jordan on November 14, 2002. That day we were happy to leave because I thought I would only spend two or three weeks in Jordan and that I would then go back to Baghdad. We traveled there by car. It took us 9 hours... Nobody really thought anything about the war. We didn’t think it was going to happen. Basel’s family told us to leave Baghdad. They couldn’t tell us that Bush was going to attack Iraq. They told us they wanted to see the girls.

The Iraqi state-run media heavily censored any news about rising tensions with the West. As Fadila recounted, “We don’t hear about the war ... because we don’t have a satellite TV in Baghdad. The government, they make it like they give a good program. So they choose a good program and put it on the TV.”

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When they arrived in Jordan they were housed by Basel’s family in a small, adjoining apartment. It was only then, while watching BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera that the couple learned of the impending war. “When we got there we realized what was happening because they had satellite TV,” she said. “When we found out that the invasion was going to happen I was shocked. I was very sad.” Fadila and Basel watched the US-led coalition’s attack on Iraq with growing concern. Fadila recalled: When the war started I cried. They started bombing at midnight when the people were sleeping. On TV they showed the bombing. I worried about my family. I couldn’t get through. I tried to contact them. It took two weeks to get through and my mother phoned me from a mobile phone. When I spoke to my mom she said the situation was very, very bad... My father said he could not leave the house because it was dangerous. He thought that there was no government, no security. The Americans bombed our neighbor’s house and all the windows and doors in my family’s house were smashed. Our neighbor’s house was destroyed. My mother said to me they prayed for the bombs to stop.

Unreliable telephone service between Jordan and Iraq intensified the sense of distance between Fadila and her family: When I couldn’t get through I was so worried. I couldn’t sleep, I cried. I could not contact them. The Americans bombed everything. This was a very bad time for us. I thought the war would last for a few days and it would be all over. I thought that we would go back after few weeks.

Fadila and Basel, along with their two children, never returned to Baghdad. They are among an estimated 1–2 million Iraqis who fled the country between the first and second Gulf Wars. During this inter-war period, more than

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277,000 Iraqis formally applied for asylum in the West, primarily to Europe and the United States, but also to Australia, New Zealand and Canada, among others. Many also fled to neighboring states in the Middle East, including more than 250,000 to Jordan, 200,000 to Iran, 40,000 to Syria, and tens of thousands to Lebanon and Turkey. An additional 1 million more were internally displaced throughout Iraq during these years. Internal displacement— though compounded by US sanctions—was largely caused by Saddam’s brutal attempts to “Arabize” Iraq’s Kurdish north and suppress Shiites in the south.2 Baghdad diarist Nuha al-Radi moved to Beirut in 1995, fearing reprisal from the Hussein regime following the publication of her diary in Granta. She restarted her diary in Lebanon, where she addressed the feelings of dislocation she felt as a refugee. On March 4, 1996, she wrote from Beirut: There is a purpose and a pride that you lose when you don’t have a country. That purpose means you are acknowledged, recognized. In the outside world you’re nothing, you have to constantly introduce and reintroduce yourself. You start from scratch every time: ‘Who are you? Where are you from? What do you do?’3

Nuha had family and friends in Jordan, and visited that country often. Like Lebanon, Jordan hosted many political exiles, artists and upper-class elites who fled Iraq during the sanctions period. While some of these refugees lived comfortably off of their savings, many others were jobless and poor. As Nuha observed on February 15, 1996 from Amman: Getting a work or residence permit is nearly impossible. It’s not really Jordan’s fault. They are a small country and have overstretched their capacity. Even if one gets a job here it’s for low pay and there aren’t

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many prospects. Insecurity and vulnerability are permanent conditions; most Iraqis would return if things were right again in Iraq.

Sheko Mako, an Iraqi blogger who emigrated to the UK during the 1990s, took a different view. According to Mako, many Iraqis who left during this period sought to break from their country of origin. The Iraqi exodus between 1990 and 2003 involved all sects of the Iraqi Community, Arabs and Kurds (and other ethnic minorities), Muslims and Christians (and other religious minorities), Shia’s and Sunnis. All economic classes of the society. Poor, middle and affluent classes. Secular and religious sections. Illiterate, basic literacy skills, educated and high professions. And most importantly, their aims were much more different—for most of Iraqis who left Iraq during this period, they wanted to achieve a complete detachment from Iraq and no will to return and desperately trying in all means to gain new identities (particularly from the affluent European countries and America). It was one-way journey for the majority of us. Not merely a physical one but mental, social and psychological.4

Mohammed, an Iraqi we met in Rinkeby, Sweden, clearly fit into this category—he sought a physical and psychological break from deprivation in Iraq. Behind one of the town’s shopping centers, Mohammed and his Iraqi friends shared snippets of local gossip and talked about regional and global events, mostly in relation to their home country. The conversation was animated and occasionally punctuated by long, reflective silences, especially when the question of the occupation was raised. Mohammed had the same distracted, almost sullen look as Amir, the Iraqi in Rinkeby we introduced in Chapter 1. He too drew heavily

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on his cigarette and blew smoke simultaneously from his nose and mouth. Mohammed, aged 36, arrived in Sweden in 2002 through Jordan and Yemen. He still remains in contact via email and telephone with his extended family in the holy Shia city of Karbala, where he was born. His parents, wife and five children—plus four brothers and four sisters—live in and around Rinkeby. Brutal repression and harsh living conditions in Iraq under Saddam compelled him to flee. Following a stint in the Iraqi Army, Mohammed was jailed for nearly a decade. He recalled: I was arrested at home because my father and cousins had a “political problem”— they were against Saddam... They arrested me because they came for my father but he was not there, so they took me instead. I was sent straight to prison, to an army jail in Baghdad. This was normal, for Iraqi people to be arrested like this... I protested but what could I do? This is how things were in Iraq under Saddam. They tortured me in jail. They broke my lower left leg by hitting me many times with a screwdriver. This happened about three times. I was attacked because they wanted to know where my father was, but I didn’t know where he was at that time... I was in prison for a long time. I was in prison from 1991 to 1998.5

For Mohammed, “jail was a terrible place, the food was terrible, there was torture all the time and it was very overcrowded.” But seemingly out of the blue, he said, a government order granted his release in 1998. He recalled: I went straight to Mosul. I did not return to Karbala as I was very scared of going back there in case I would be arrested again... Another family moved into our house in Karbala. Most of my family, including my father, had left for Saudi Arabia because they were scared of the Saddam government... They first went to Basra, then to Saudi Arabia.

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Mohammed stayed in Mosul for two months then went back to Karbala to tidy up some family affairs. He then returned to Mosul where he said he felt “safe, without problems. I was no longer scared... Mosul was a beautiful place.” Mohammed moonlighted as an auto electrician, earning enough to pay his rent and to save a little. He lived a lonely, isolated life as he tried to accumulate some money for the future. But Mohammed felt that the situation in Iraq was getting worse by the day. “We were alive in Iraq but we were dead,” he recalled. “We didn’t know if we would be alive the next day. We didn’t know what would happen to us. Life was very hard. There were very few jobs and there were always shortages of things.” In 2001 Mohammed escaped: I wanted to feel free, to live without fear. I bought a false passport from a man in Mosul. I had to pay US$7000. I worked hard as a mechanic to save this money, very hard, long hours. I made a deal with this man to bribe officials so that I could get into Jordan. He had many friends who were officials. This sort of thing was normal in Iraq.

Eventually Mohammed was able to enter Jordan using bribes and false documents. The harsh reality of life in Jordan soon became apparent: It is very difficult... We were only allowed to stay for three months in Amman, then we had to leave the country and come back. This was a condition of entry for us. I paid $600 to get to Yemen, then I was able to get back [to Jordan]. In Amman I worked at a telephone exchange for very little money. I lived alone and tried to save but there was very little money. It was very hard for me.

For Mohammed, this solitary existence and the constant threat of deportation “for any reason” reminded him of his

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time in Iraq under Saddam and the sanctions. “In Iraq there were three groups of people—the rich, the middle people and the poor,” he said. He continued: We were poor and there were many things we could not get, like medicines. We were given a government card which allowed us to buy food more cheaply. You could buy anything on the black market if you had the money. We did not have this sort of money… In Jordan I was always short of things. I had very little money. I got things from the black market.

In Iraq, Mohammed had friends and family to rely upon in order to attain life’s basic necessities. But in Jordan, he felt acutely isolated and vulnerable to the whims of officials who could deport him at any time. Mohammed feared this more than anything: “I could not go back to Iraq. It was too dangerous for me. I would have been killed.” Mohammed left Jordan for Sweden in late 2002. He said he opposed the US invasion and saw it as a “grab” for Iraqi oil. Five of his cousins have died since 2003— “killed roughly at the same time.” He was not certain who had killed them, but he stressed: This is terrible for our family. You cannot go anywhere in Iraq without fear. People are scared all the time. There is lack of water and electricity. The hospitals have been destroyed and there is no transport. My family cannot get work. It is very difficult for them. They tell me these things every time I call. It is very sad to hear of this.

Mohammed spends most of his days either working his part-time job as a mechanic, at home with his family, or visiting his parents and sisters. Mohammed also meets friends—many of whom have lived in Rinkeby since the early 1990s following the first Gulf War—in coffee shops, at home and on street corners to share cigarettes and

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conversation. Clouds of tobacco smoke hover over these encounters, which invariably come back to the topic of Iraq, its people, and their continued suffering. “I feel like a free man here,” he said. “I go everywhere I want. I don’t feel fear or think that I should stay at home. I know that if I go out I will not be attacked or arrested, or anything like this.” At the same time, Mohammed said, “I don’t forget about my home, my country. It never leaves my mind.” Mohammed paused, then added: I feel angry. All Iraqis feel angry. We live outside of the country and we do not want the American occupation. They must leave Iraq. Most Iraqis were against the occupation. No one wanted this. We were against Saddam Hussein but we did not want an occupation. We will return if the US leaves our country and if the political situation is better.

Mohammed calmed down as he took another drag off his cigarette. “I want to smell Iraqi soil again,” he added. “We live in Sweden but our hearts are in Iraq.”

Three Waves of Suffering While up to 2 million people left Iraq during the sanctions period, the 2003 invasion produced a veritable tsunami of displacement. The war and its bloody aftermath yielded an additional 2.4 million refugees and displaced more than 2.7 million within Iraq.6 This unprecedented number of displaced persons—over 5 million in sum—remains the highest in the region since the establisment of Israel in 1948. The creation of this new Iraqi diaspora was widely predicted beforehand. A December 2002 UN assessment entitled “Likely Humanitarian Scenarios” estimated that there would “eventually be some 900,000 Iraqi refugees

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requiring assistance, of which 100,000 will be in need of immediate assistance,” and an additional “2 million requiring assistance with shelter.” There were also warnings by Human Rights Watch of a “humanitarian disaster” impacting hundreds of thousands of people, and alerts from the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Kenzo Oshima, foreseeing 10 million Iraqis requiring food assistance, 12 million without potable water, and between 600,000 and 1.45 million new refugees, in the event of war. Gil Loescher, then senior fellow for forced displacement and international security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, agreed with these assessments. In February 2003 he argued, “A new conflict is likely to dramatically increase the number of those fleeing [and] it is clear that the mechanisms and resources needed to respond to worst case scenarios are not in place.”7 The US military did little, if anything, to prepare for the humanitarian catastrophe that would be sparked by the invasion. According to Loescher: Perhaps the most alarming feature of present contingency planning is the almost total lack of coordination between the US government and military, the UN agencies, and the non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The military has been unwilling to discuss its contingency plans or assumptions for fear of revealing its war strategy. Consequently, NGOs are left in a void, unable to know what other major actors are planning and prevented from making adequate plans because of government restrictions on their activities in Iraq and Iran.8

Relief plans hatched by the Pentagon were poorly executed and managed. As explained by Joel R. Charny, vice president for policy at Refugees International, personnel from the

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Pentagon’s Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) were kept waiting in Kuwait on security grounds for several weeks after the destruction of the Iraqi government. When ORHA personnel finally did enter the country, they isolated themselves from the Iraqi people and established themselves in one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces, in essence assuming the symbolic trappings of his rule. With no policing capacity and the military unable to establish law and order, ORHA has been slow to restore basic services and perform what was supposed to be its top objective, establishing a legitimate Iraqi authority that could govern locally as a national political dialogue was being prepared.9

The immediate failures of ORHA to deal with the humanitarian needs of Iraqis— namely to restore electricity, water, and civil order—were compounded by poor decisionmaking by the Coalition Provisional Authority. According to Michael Schwartz, author of War Without End: The Iraq War in Context, overzealous de-Baathification resulted in the first of three distinct waves of Iraqi displacement. Under the direction of Paul Bremer, the CPA immediately began dismantling Iraq’s state apparatus. Thousands of Baathist Party bureaucrats were purged from the government; tens of thousands of workers were laid off from shuttered, state-owned industries; hundreds of thousands of Iraqi military personnel were dismissed from Saddam’s dismantled military. Their numbers soon multiplied as the ripple effect of their lost buying power rolled through the economy. Many of the displaced found other (less remunerative) jobs; some hunkered down to wait out bad times; still others left their homes and sought work elsewhere, with the most marketable going to nearby countries where their skills were still in demand. They were the leading edge of the first wave of Iraqi refugees.10

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While poor economic conditions sparked the first wave of refugees, a second wave of displacement was spurred by violence in Falluja. Two US sieges of the predominantly Sunni city, located 60 kilometers west of Baghdad, destroyed 36,000 of Falluja’s 50,000 homes along with 65 mosques, 60 schools and several hospitals. At least 200,000 residents—of a city of 280,000—were rendered homeless.11 The movement of Fallujans into other Iraqi cities constituted the second wave. In turn, social pressures and violence caused by displaced Fallujans sparked a third major wave of refugees. As described by Iraqi Finance Minister Ali Allawi: Refugees leaving Falluja had converged on the western Sunni suburbs of Baghdad, Amriya and Ghazaliya, which had come under the control of the insurgency. Insurgents, often backed by relatives of the [Sunni] Falluja refugees, turned on the Shia residents of these neighbourhoods. Hundreds of Shia families were driven from their homes, which were then seized by the refugees. Sunni Arab resentment against the Shia’s “collaboration” with the occupation’s forces had been building up, exacerbated by the apparent indifference of the Shia to the assault on Falluja. In turn, the Shia were becoming incensed by the daily attacks on policemen and soldiers, who were mostly poor Shia men. The targeting of Sunnis in majority Shia neighbourhoods began in early 2005. In the Shaab district of Baghdad, for instance, the assassination of a popular Sadrist cleric, Sheikh Haitham al-Ansari, led to the formation of one of the first Shia death squads... The cycle of killings, assassinations, bombings and expulsions fed into each other, quickly turning to a full-scale ethnic cleansing of city neighbourhoods and towns.12

The February 2006 bombing of the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra—one of the holiest sites of Shia Islam—produced unchecked sectarian violence and accelerated the massive

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third wave. According to Mama, a blogger from Mosul, Iraqi families left their homes for a variety of reasons. They fled because of danger either direct threatening, or dangerous neighborhood. Sometimes the terrorists captivate the house and it’s owners, so in any chance, they leave to stay alive. In the other hand the military forces may hide in citizens house’s to watch the surrounding areas or to make an ambush for someone hiding nearby. Some may leave the country or their town to look for a job or to work safely without blackmail.13

Sometimes families leave simply out of grief. In March 2008, Mama reported that a close friend named Raffi was killed by a car bomb. Raffi was “the sweetest guy I ever knew. He had charming smile, loving shy look. He had a big heart full of love and a caring personality.” The anguish caused by his death was too great for his family to bear. According to Mama: Raffi’s family left home because every corner reminds them about their loss, and induce pain. they see Raffi in his room, on his chair, every where causes grief for them. they left their memories and their own house behind them and rent another house. Others may leave their house for the same reason...14

By April 2008 there were at least 2.77 million internally displaced persons scattered across the country, centered mainly in and around Baghdad, Mosul, Dahuk and Diyala governorates. Iraq’s neighbors have also absorbed millions of first-, second-, and third-wave refugees. Syria accepted more than 1.2 million, while Jordan has taken on at least 700,000. Other countries with fewer, though still substantial, new Iraqi refugee populations include Egypt (70,000), Iran

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(57,000), and Lebanon (40,000).15 In total, nearly one in five Iraqis have been displaced since 2003.

In Jordan Laith, the man from Baquba with two young boys and a pregnant wife introduced in Chapter 1, has lived in East Amman since October 2004. “If I was able to work, I wouldn’t live in a shack like this,” said Laith, referring to his crumbling concrete house.16 Like all other Iraqi refugees there, Laith has no rights under the law. “We are not allowed to work—my wife had to sell all of her jewelry or whatever she could sell,” he added. Laith was fortunate to find illegal employment as a carpenter when he first arrived from Iraq. But only a few months after taking the job, he deeply cut four fingers on a table saw. While the wounds have healed, he has lost full use of his right hand. “I am not a citizen, there is no compensation. No health insurance,” he said. As a registered refugee with the UNHCR, Laith received food assistance, discounted medical services and assistance with resettlement. Despite these benefits, only 53,000 of the 700,000 Iraqis in Jordan have formally registered with the organization.17 Laith believed that many Iraqis—especially those living in Jordan illegally—were afraid to enter their names into an official record while others refused to do so out of pride. The UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees defines a “refugee” as a person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political

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opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.

The Convention states that all signatories must “accord to refugees lawfully staying in their territory the most favourable treatment accorded to nationals of a foreign country in the same circumstances, as regards the right to engage in wage-earning employment.” The Convention goes on to say that no Contracting State shall expel or return ... a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.18

Although 144 countries are party to this 1951 convention, Jordan and Syria—the two states hosting the greatest numbers of Iraqis—are not. While Laith is registered as a refugee, he scoffed at the designation’s importance. “If you show UNHCR documents to police, they will throw it back and say it is not valid here. They don’t consider this as their own laws,” he said. Laith lives in Jordan on an expired visitor visa. “If my son was to be hit by a car I’d be afraid of taking him to a hospital because I have no rights as an Iraqi here in Jordan. We live in fear.” Unlike nearby Syria, Jordan does not permit Iraqis to attend public school. “For three years [the children] have been out of school. A local church used to organize classes, but then the government shut down the church because it was not authorized.” Beginning in 2008, his children started classes at a small, officially registered school for refugees set up by the NGO Save the Children. “This school teaches

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everything,” said Laith. “Save the Children pays [all costs] and the children are happy,” he said. While his children attend school, Laith chain-smokes at home. When we met him, he was awaiting word from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the UN affiliate processing his immigration application to the United States. Since 2003, the US has accepted more than 30,000 Iraqi refugees.19 Although it is a sought-after destination, Laith had serious concerns about immigrating to the US. “I will arrive into America in debt, because I will have to pay for everything,” he said angrily. “You have to pay back whatever the IOM says—but it is not clear what those costs are.” One pamphlet from the IOM said that he needed to repay $3000 per adult and $1500 per child within 36 months of arrival into the US. “I must pay telephone, food, transport, clothes—everything that must be repaid is on the list,” he said, clutching the crumpled directive. “I’d rather stay here, and put up with this”—he pointed to the room’s crude electric heater—“than go to a country being in debt. We’d be losing our dignity. I’d rather be in poverty than be in debt.” When asked how long he’d stay in Jordan if he later declined an offer to the US, Laith grew silent. “I don’t have any time limit. When I came to Jordan, I had a time frame of nine months. It’s now been four years,” he trailed off. Ahmed, the 21-year-old Iraqi nearly kidnapped in front of his home in Adhamiya, has also lived in Jordan since 2004. Unlike Laith, Ahmed comes from a privileged background as his parents were well-to-do professionals in Iraq before the invasion. “They stayed [in Iraq] till 2006 because my family thought it would be better. There was always hope it was going to get better,” Ahmed recalled. His parents’

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exodus typifies the current Iraqi “brain drain”—the flight from the country of those citizens possessing the valuable technical skills essential for reconstruction. By 2006, Iraq lost 40 percent of its professional class. In Baghdad, some hospitals and universities lost up to 80 percent of their staff. Most flee out of fear—more than 380 university academics and doctors were killed from 2003 to 2006.20 His father is needed in Iraq, but according to Ahmed it is too dangerous for him to practice medicine there. “My father is a senior ophthalmologist,” he said proudly. “He graduated from Moscow and he was the first Arab ophthalmologist in Libya after the nationalization there. He operated his clinic in Baghdad from 1983 until 2006 when he moved to Amman.” Ahmed’s father was threatened soon after the bombing of the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra. “My father, he doesn’t tell. But my sister and mother tell me that one day they saw him and he was like in a total shock, pale, and after that he said he wanted to do operations outside of Iraq. He wanted to leave.” His father’s livelihood has suffered in Jordan. First, he had to assume the name of a Jordanian to elude authorities, and then agree to give half of his income to the head doctor at his hospital. “Everyday I hear from him: ‘I am dying here.’ Because he was a doctor in Baghdad, he used to see like 50 patients a day. Now, every month he sees only one patient. He is losing money,” Ahmed said. His clinic is far from his home—he goes, he pays 2 JD [Jordanian Dinars] for a taxi, he comes back, it’s another 2 JD. Every month, one patient, he gets 10 JD. But he must give half to the owner, so he loses.

Ahmed’s mother was also threatened in Iraq. “My mom is a graduate from the American University in Baghdad, and

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she has a master’s degree in business administration. She started teaching in Mustansiriya University in 1977 and stopped in 2006 when she moved here,” said Ahmed. The university is located in northeastern Baghdad on the tip of Sadr City, the volatile Shia enclave. “She got a note: ‘You have to stop going to university.’ They threw the note into the garage. Three months later, she left her university.” His mother was fortunate to leave when she did. On January 16, 2007, two bombs killed at least 70 students, professors and staff at Mustansiriya. Four weeks later, a female suicide bomber killed another 42 people at the gates of the Business and Administration Department during mid-term exams. To date, at least 280 academics have been killed across Iraq, while another 3000 have fled the country in response to bombings, assassinations and abductions. By mid 2008, university attendance across Baghdad had fallen by two thirds. If Shia and Sunni extremists aimed to destroy Iraq’s knowledge base, they have largely succeeded. “The health and educational systems are depleted of good professionals,” said Dr. Mustafa Jaboury of the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education in 2007. “Nearly one third of those [professionals] living in Iraq before 2003 have fled violence.”21 Ahmed and his mother had to enroll in university in Amman to obtain Jordanian residency cards. “It costs like 15,000 JD per year for me and my mother,” said Ahmed. While his mother pursues a PhD in marketing, Ahmed is studying to be an architect. “I want to do urban planning. I love Sim City,” he said, referring to the popular city planning video game. “Next year is my last year at uni. I will then do my master’s.”

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Ahmed was unsure if he would return to Iraq. “For me, it’s my dream to add something to that country,” he said. But the reality of going back is different: After graduation, I won’t go back to Baghdad for at least ten years. The place there is not for young people—it’s for politicians. I want to live my 20s and 30s outside of the country. I want to be free. After ten years I’ll think about it. I’m 21 now.

In the meantime, Ahmed had more immediate concerns— namely the slowly depleting family funds that have supported him his whole life. “To be honest, for three years in Jordan, we don’t have any income,” he said. “So what money we had, we are spending it here for my university, my mother’s university, my sister’s school and daily expenses.” Ahmed feared that his family did not have enough money to deal with any medical emergencies that may arise in his parents’ old age. “No insurance, nothing, it’s hard. My parents, they are not young.” Ahmed plans to support his entire family after graduation. “I am the one with the opportunity to do something. But when I think about it—looking at it financially—I have to go to the Gulf and work. That is the only way to support them.” Wages in the Gulf states are much higher than in other Arab countries. But the costs of living are higher there too. “Especially Dubai—if I am thinking about Dubai I’ll need to have six roommates. And if I go [to work] every day by taxi, I’ll lose all the money.” Despite the hardships ahead, Ahmed looked forward to leaving Jordan. Once welcomed, Iraqis are now stigmatized. On November 9, 2005, suicide bombers killed 60 people in three upscale Amman hotels. The bombers, it was soon discovered, were Iraqi. “We used to live in heaven. It was really good for me. You were Iraqi, they liked you. Now it’s

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all changed,” he said. Following the bombing, Jordanians grew wary of Iraqis in their midst and the government tightened controls at the border. “Let’s not forget that those who blew themselves up in the hotels in 2005 carried fake passports,” said one Jordanian official after the blasts. “Now we have to be careful about who we let in our country because we do not want another tragedy,” he added.22 Jordanians now blame the presence of Iraqis for a spike in the price of real estate, water shortages, and even traffic jams. Jordanian taxi drivers are notorious for insulting, and sometimes assaulting, Iraqis. When traveling, Ahmed tries to disguise his Iraqi identity. “I change my accent, just so they don’t know I’m Iraqi. And one of the reasons I wear this scarf”—Ahmed grabbed the checkered black and white shawl around his neck—“is because this means you’re Jordanian. I’m in disguise. I have to be.” Ahmed also adopts the accent of a Jordanian when in public: There is a problem whenever I speak Iraqi Arabic. Because every time I speak Iraqi Arabic—there is a letter in Jordanian Arabic “k” that they pronounce “g.” And so if they know I’m Iraqi, people start to blame me, like my father came here and he raised the prices and all the apartments are full now, and he bombed the hotels. And we end up fighting.

Many Iraqis still try to enter Jordan but are turned away at the border. In August 2007, an Iraqi blogger known as Dr. Mohammed wrote about the humiliations he suffered upon arrival at Amman’s Queen Alia International Airport. Mohammed planned to take a three-week trip to Jordan to see his parents and spend time with his wife “away from the explosions and the hell in Iraq.”23 The border control officer was not sympathetic and placed Mohammed and his wife into a squalid waiting hall. At one point he observed a

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young mother plead with a guard to let her access diapers for her infant child: She told him that she wants to get diapers for her baby from her bag (which is outside the “jail”) she needs it because she is so dirty , he told her that it isn’t possible. the poor baby was crying, it smelled, the women begged him so many times, and now I was so angry so I pulled that women and told her: It’s true that I’m a stranger to you, but please consider me as your brother and stop begging to him, it tears our hearts apart, use something else as a diaper, come with me. At the same time another woman heard the conversation and gave her a towel, she used it. but again the baby was dirty, the mother so angry , all the “detainees” are so angry and we all begun to shout and tell them to let her bring her diapers, but they didn’t let us, my wife headed to the officer as he has opened the door and she told him: please let her get the diapers, the baby is dirty, please, have you no mercy? I tried to pull her back because I know that he will say something we will not like, he pointed at her with his finger ordering her to step back by the movement of the finger and looking at her as looking into something miserable and he stood up and closed the door on us again, and again my love begins to cry, I want to stick my finger in his eyes, why does he do that? Why? She said. the mother begins to cry and saying: is this what happens to Iraqis, poor Iraqis...... at this time I cried, yes I cried in public, it was a very sad seen, a mother and her baby crying for a diaper, and we are in this “jail” and treated like this, everyone is dirty and tired, the women are crying for a day now, why does these women have to experience jail, what have they done?

Mohammed and his wife were sent back to Baghdad after spending more than twelve hours in the waiting room. Months later, Dr. Mohammed tried to enter Jordan again, this time so his wife could obtain a British passport that would enable the two of them to immigrate to the UK. But again he was turned away. While detained he wrote:

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it has been 18 hours without food or water.....and there is no one to buy anything from...I’m ready to pay 100$ for a sandwich and a bottle or water or at least let us go back home. They say the Iraqi airplane will arrive at 2 p.m. but from past experience I don’t believe that will happen, I believe it will be later than that. I don’t know what to say or feel, I need sleep, I need a sofa or bed, my body is aching from laying on the ground and sitting on the metal chairs, I’m hungry and thirsty....I’m angry, so sad and so so tired, I just want to scream. I didn’t think that I will go throw this experience again.....It’s so devastating, it destroys my soul and body, it kills me to see these real, classy and good original Iraqis men and women laying and sleeping on the floor for no mistake they have committed... only because of our original sin .....the sin of being an Iraqi...24

In Syria Syria has been a regional haven for refugees from Iraq, especially for those refused entry into, or deported from, Jordan. Syria’s Baathist government opened its doors to Iraqis following the invasion—accepting at its peak rate roughly 60,000 Iraqis per month between February 2006 and October 2007. Iraqi blogger Riverbend fled to Syria in mid 2007. On Baghdad Burning, she marveled at the ease with which she entered Iraq’s western neighbor: The first minutes after passing the border were overwhelming. Overwhelming relief and overwhelming sadness... How is it that only a stretch of several kilometers and maybe twenty minutes, so firmly segregates life from death? How is it that a border no one can see or touch stands between car bombs, militias, death squads and... peace, safety? It’s difficult to believe—even now. I sit here and write this and wonder why I can’t hear the explosions.

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I wonder at how the windows don’t rattle as the planes pass overhead. I’m trying to rid myself of the expectation that armed people in black will break through the door and into our lives. I’m trying to let my eyes grow accustomed to streets free of road blocks, hummers and pictures of Muqtada and the rest... How is it that all of this lies a short car ride away?25

On October 1, 2007, Syria terminated its open door policy on Iraqi asylum seekers. According to the New York Times, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki pressured Syrian officials to tighten the border because the flow of refugees “undermined the Iraqi government’s effort to bring greater security to the country.”26 Since the change, only Iraqi academics, truck or taxi drivers, and merchants are allowed easy entry. But prior to the establishment of these new rules, Iraqis were granted short-term visitor visas at the border. When they expired, Iraqis simply exited, then reentered the country on a new visa. In her final posting on her celebrated blog, Riverbend meditated on the act of renewing her visa: By the time we had reentered the Syrian border and were headed back to the cab ready to take us into Kameshli, I had resigned myself to the fact that we were refugees. I read about refugees on the Internet daily... in the newspapers... hear about them on TV. I hear about the estimated 1.5 million plus Iraqi refugees in Syria and shake my head, never really considering myself or my family as one of them. After all, refugees are people who sleep in tents and have no potable water or plumbing, right? Refugees carry their belongings in bags instead of suitcases and they don’t have cell phones or Internet access, right? Grasping my passport in my hand like my life depended on it, with two extra months in Syria stamped inside, it hit me how wrong I was. We were all refugees. I was

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suddenly a number. No matter how wealthy or educated or comfortable, a refugee is a refugee. A refugee is someone who isn’t really welcome in any country—including their own... especially their own.27

Unlike Jordan, Syria allows Iraqis to work legally, and even to open new businesses. Miriam, a 26-year-old we met in Jeramana—an Iraqi enclave seven kilometers southeast of the gritty Syrian capital—worked at a nearby leather handbag factory. She told us that she worked nine hours a day, six days a week, and made $120 per month—or roughly 51 cents per hour. She made just enough to pay rent for the small one-bedroom apartment she shared with her brother and elderly parents in a cracked concrete building. She continued to work despite a large, poorly bandaged gash on her right hand. “An accident,” she said. Aisha, a young waitress and single mother with two young daughters, made $150 per month at a Jeramana café. Even combined with her savings, she said it was not enough. Monthly rent alone in Jeramana for a one-bedroom flat was approximately $150, she said.28 The UNHCR and Syrian Arab Red Crescent provide the bulk of support services for Iraqis in Syria. At the UNHCR registration center in Duma—the world’s largest—up to 500 Iraqis a day are interviewed and receive official UN refugee status. Thus far, about 200,000 Iraqis have registered. Once recognized, they are given a formal certificate from UNHCR-Syria that reads in part: As a refugee he/she is a person of concern to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and should, in particular, be protected from forcible return to a country where he/she would face threats to his or her life or freedom. Any assistance accorded to the above-named individual would be most appreciated.

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Recognized refugees are entitled to free medical services, and in some cases to food handouts or monthly stipends. While we met many Iraqis in Damascus who had chosen to register, most knew little about the UNHCR services available to them. Although some Iraqis are lucky enough to find work, the majority in Syria live off of their savings. When these run dry, many choose to make the journey back to Iraq. In a dusty lot in Zaida Zeinab—another Damascus enclave that holds more than 500,000 Iraqis—about a dozen coach buses a day return Iraqis to the country they once called home. Buses charge 1000 Syrian Pounds—about $10— for a one-way ticket to Baghdad. Kaezem from Monsur, Baghdad, was waiting to board one of the coaches. “I heard it was safer in Baghdad, but the main reason I’m leaving is that I’m out of money,” he said. A heavyset man dressed in black and his aunt, an older lady with tired, sunken eyes, also said that they were out of money. “We can’t work,” said the man as he sat on a bus, ready to depart for Baghdad. “We’ve sold everything,” the aunt added. “The water heater, our furniture, everything. The only thing I have left are these clothes,” she said as she pulled on her sleeve. “We’d rather die in Iraq than starve as foreigners in Syria,” muttered the man.29 They are not alone. In November 2007, a UNHCR survey asked Iraqis in Damascus why they, or someone they knew, were returning to Iraq. Nearly half of the respondents (46 percent) said that they could no longer afford to live in Syria, roughly a quarter (26 percent) answered that their visas had expired and they were forced to leave, while 14 percent had heard that the security situation had improved and that they could now safely go home.30 “There is greater mobility

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and probably a large number has gone back, but people are keeping their options open and very sizeable numbers of Iraqi refugees remain in Syria,” said UNHCR-Syria representative Laurens Jolles in February 2009. “Many people have gone through very traumatic experiences. Not everybody can go back to their lives in terms of living in the same neighborhood or house,” Jolles added. Most formerly mixed Sunni/Shia neighborhoods in Baghdad are now divided along sectarian lines. Added Kristele Younes, a senior advocate for Refugees International: A lot of [returnees] have been intimidated. Some of them have been killed. Their houses have been blown up. It seems that the communities are not necessarily ready yet to welcome large-scale returns, especially large-scale returns from other sects than the main ones in their neighborhoods.31

In Transit Rafed had only been in Syria for one month but was already anxious to leave. Though he was unemployed, he took great pride in his appearance. For our January 2008 meeting in Jeramana, the 30-year-old sported a clean suit, polished shoes, and short well-cropped hair. “Good appearance,” he said in his tidy second-story flat, “is important.”32 Rafed studied computer science at university, but after the invasion he worked as a security guard for Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) in the Green Zone. He was given a radio and body armor, but no gun. “If I saw anything strange, I just talked on the radio,” he said. The problem, he added, was getting to and from work. At the time, he lived 15 minutes from the Green Zone. “It was very dangerous leaving and entering,” he said. “People

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began killing us off one by one—my friends. If they saw anyone going into the palace or going out, they would be marked for working with the Americans. Four or five of my friends were killed.” Rafed fled from Baghdad to Jordan in October 2004 with his two older brothers, his sister and his mother. (His father lived alone in Australia since the late 1990s after entering the country illegally and claiming asylum.) “When I left Iraq—I had no contacts, no mobile numbers of people. We had to leave a lot of things in Iraq. We took only one suitcase with clothes,” he said. After finding a flat in Amman’s east, “First, I stayed home and waited.” He soon discovered a loophole in Jordanian law. While Iraqis cannot legally work, they may “volunteer” for state-registered NGOs. In turn, these NGOs can pay for incidentals like food and traveling costs. “I was a computer teacher for a church—they paid me a symbolic amount. I teach two classes, pay me 150 JD,” he said. Later, he volunteered for Save the Children. “I was helping Iraqi refugees—helping a doctor register people’s names into a computer. Paid 2 JD a day plus a meal.” He also worked with Mercy Corps. “They wanted to register Iraqis that were not in school. And we helped organize activities for children.” While certainly not idyllic, Rafed’s life in Jordan was stable. But things changed as he headed home from his work with Mercy Corps one day in October 2007: I was at the NGO, and when I left the place, I got beaten up by four people. I don’t know them. One of them tells me they are police officers. They came out from the car, started hitting me in the street, dragged me into the car. They took me into a Mercedes. They insulted me and were

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swearing and beating me. They said, “We know that you’re Iraqi and we want to kick you out of this country. You don’t belong here.”

As we learned from Zahira, Rafed’s former girlfriend in Jordan, the incident stemmed from a fight between the children of Rafed’s sister and those of the men who led the assault. “It started with a kids’ fight—but the adults took revenge on him,” she said. “Dads, uncles and cousins. Rafed didn’t have anything to do with the problem. He was trying to solve the problem with the kids.”33 The vicious attack continued inside the Mercedes as the car sped away from the NGO office. After several minutes, the car pulled up to a police station. “They knew someone at the station,” said Rafed. “I didn’t understand what was happening—they were beating me up then taking me to the police.” Once inside the station, Rafed explained to the officers what happened. “I am a volunteer. These people just showed up and started beating me,” he said. At first, the police seemed unsure of what to do. The men who led the assault insisted that the police deport Rafed, but a sympathetic officer took Rafed to the hospital. Rafed showed us a worn photocopy of his medical report. “Bruise on the face and cuts on the face and neck and right knee, arm, and left leg. The heart is good. – Prince Hamza Hospital, October 27, 2007,” noted the paper in Arabic. Rafed filed a police report about the incident, and less than a week later one of the men that had beaten him was arrested. “He was in the army or police force,” said Rafed. Friends of the suspect then began pressuring him to drop the charges. “They were trying to intimidate me into saying that I was wrong and it wasn’t this guy.” Rafed refused, and a trial was held. The defendant was found

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guilty and was levied a small fine. But the ruling did not end Rafed’s troubles. “After this, I got a phone call to go to the muhabarat,” he said. Afraid of what might happen, Rafed first spoke with representatives of the UNHCR. “I went to see them and told them that the muhabarat called me to see them, and they said, ‘Go, it’s not a problem.’” Although they summoned only Rafed, his eldest brother Aasif insisted on accompanying him. “He cares about me,” said Rafed. Rafed and Aasif went to the muhabarat offices first thing in the morning—and by 3:00 p.m. they were still waiting to be seen. Then, all of a sudden, several plain-clothed men approached, handcuffed them, covered their eyes with blindfolds, and put them in a car. “They drove out to a prison—a desert prison,” said Rafed. “A detention center for immigrants.” At the prison the two brothers were not allowed to contact anyone. “They took all my papers—UNHCR papers—and my cell phone,” Rafed said. In Jordan, UN refugee status “doesn’t do anything,” he explained. They were not mistreated, but the prison was severely overcrowded. Rafed and Aasif shared a cell with at least 40 others. “We were all together in a large room,” he said. “Many Iraqis and Egyptians were there—and Indians, Iraqi merchants. The Iraqi people—they didn’t understand why they were there.” Back in East Amman, the middle brother, Nasir, had learned from the local police where his brothers were being held. “After one week, he comes to the prison with plane tickets,” said Rafed. The tickets were one-way to Erbil, the relatively safe Kurdish city in Iraq’s north. Prison guards returned to the men their UN papers and cell phones, then escorted Rafed and Aasif to the airport for their flight. Once back in Iraq, the men stayed with friends in Erbil then

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headed south to Baghdad to obtain merchant visas for Syria. Rafed recalled: The merchant visa was very expensive. We must put the money in the bank—US$60,000 for each person—to show the Iraqi Chamber of Commerce. We knew someone who was able to put the account in our name temporarily—then changed it back to his name.

Rafed and his brother each received a plastic merchant ID card from the Chamber of Commerce, which they then took to the Syrian embassy in order to acquire their visas. On December 13, 2007, the brothers took a bus to Damascus—a long but uneventful trip. They now share a two-bedroom flat off a dark lane in Jeramana, Damascus. The main street in Jeramana is filled with trappings of Iraqi life, including Iraqi clothing stores, record shops and restaurants. “Iraqi-style” falafels—large crescent-shaped pitas filled with pickled vegetables, curried chickpeas and large crunchy falafel balls—are Rafed’s favorite snack. Asked how he likes Damascus, Rafed responded: “It’s really hard to say after one month. I really don’t want to say. It’s a transit country only—I really want to go to my parents.” In 2006, his mother was granted a humanitarian visa and reunited with his father in Australia. While Aasif sought to return to Jordan to continue operating a profitable shipping company he founded in Amman, a Sydney-based lawyer is now processing Rafed’s visa application to Australia. “Inshallah—I will make it to Sydney,” Rafed said.

In Australia Australia—a country of roughly 21 million people—has admitted more than 11,000 Iraqis since 2003.34 Fadila and

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Basel, whom we met at the start of the chapter, recounted their journey from Iraq in the living room of their Coffs Harbour home. As Fadila explained: In 2003, we had applied to go to America... I felt very bad that I was going to the country that invaded us. I was happy when they refused us! I was also angry when they refused us. I feel this now. Maybe they read my face that I don’t want them. I was interviewed by a woman. They took photos of us, like criminals. An older lady talked to us. She asked us many questions. I gave them a lot of information about my family.35

After the United States denied their application, UNHCR officials in Jordan referred their case to Canada. “We waited eight months and there was no answer,” said Fadila. “I don’t know why the Americans or Canadians refused us. I was very nervous about this.” Fadila and Basel felt increasingly vulnerable as they grew acutely aware of the pressures that Iraqis were exerting on Jordanian society. UNHCR-Jordan suggested that they try Australia, and the couple readily agreed. Fadila made a forceful case during their interview with Australian immigration officials. “I told the people who interviewed us that if you accept us then tell us straight away or I will go back to Iraq,” she recalled. “It took two days for the decision to come through. I was crying when I heard. If he hadn’t have told me I would have thought about going back to Baghdad.” When the time came for Fadila and her family to leave Jordan for Australia, emotions were mixed. She looked forward to the security of Australia, but felt terrible leaving behind her family in Iraq and Basel’s loving, supportive family in Jordan. As Fadila recalled:

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I kissed [Basel’s] parents. I hugged them because I knew it would be a long time before I see them again. They said good luck and take care of your family. They told me that it’s not good for your heart if you think of your family. It was such a difficult time for us.

For Basel, the journey to Australia also proved bittersweet. He believed he would have greater opportunities in that country, but it was difficult to leave his family in Jordan and his old life in Baghdad. Basel also had to deal with Fadila’s grief. Eventually, however, a sense of happiness and optimism took hold. As Basel explained: On the flight I saw that Fadila was very upset. We had our own house in Baghdad. It was a big villa. It was close to Fadila’s parents—about ten minutes by car. It was a four-bedroom villa. It was very beautiful; we had a lovely garden. When we left for Jordan we did not know that we were leaving the house. We left everything behind, like furniture, expensive furniture, and also many beautiful things. We left all our clothes and all our belongings. We left jewelry behind. When we left the villa some people moved into the house. I don’t know who they were, maybe Shiite, I’m not sure. We’re not sure what has happened to the house. Fadila’s father went to the house but he was threatened. They threatened to kill him. There was no security. I thought about this on the plane, but life is important, at least we had life. I thank God for everything. When we were on the plane we were excited. We were looking forward to going to Australia. We had big smiles, we were happy. Really, we were all happy. We were going to have our lives back. We knew that the kids would be safe and happy.

The young family was settled by Sanctuary, an Anglican-Australian NGO. Coffs Harbour, a sunny beachside destination in tropical northern New South Wales, is a popular resettlement area and home to many people from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Basel recalled that when

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the family arrived in Coffs Harbour after a 13-hour journey, it was early in the evening: “We arrived at nighttime. I think it was 9:00 p.m. We went outside. It was so different. When we arrived at the airport we were helped by a lot of people. They were so kind.” Sanctuary arranged housing for the young family in a modest three-bedroom home. Basel described it as “paradise” and the town as “beautiful.” He said that he felt safe and secure in the area and was happy that Fadila and the children were removed from the threat of daily violence. Though Basel missed having a garden in which he could grow vegetables—there was only a concrete patio at the front of the house—it felt like “home.” After a few weeks in Australia, Basel and Fadila enrolled in an English course at the local college. “It felt very difficult because we did not speak English,” said Basel. “I knew a bit of English. I studied English in the dentistry school.” Today they are able to speak basic conversational English, but once he becomes proficient Basel plans to restart the dentistry career that has been on hold since 2002. For now, the family relies on welfare payments and government rent assistance to make ends meet. Although they live modestly, they have managed to fill their new house with all the accoutrements of a warm and well-loved home: neat and tidy furniture, vacuumed rugs, framed pictures, a few colorful ceramics and ornaments, dried flowers in elegant vases, and Basel’s formidable collection of coffee mugs from various parts of the world. As our conversation in Coffs Harbour came to an end, both Basel and Fadila reflected on their future in Australia. Basel dismissed the idea of ever returning to Iraq: “No, for me it is not my country. I want to stay. My home is Australia.” Fadila, on the other hand, felt that “someday I

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could go back, but it is difficult, it’s a dream now. I would like to take my two daughters. I hope my family can come here, but we are here far away from everybody.” Fadila’s voice was tinged with sadness. “I love Australia, really,” she said, her bright brown eyes beaming, reflecting flittering images off the nearby TV screen. “Here they open their arms to us, [but] I feel sad for people in Iraq. I have like two eyes: one for Australia and one for Iraq.”

3 Censoring Civilians

In George Orwell’s 1984, an “unperson” was anyone deemed by the state never to have existed at all, one whose mere existence could threaten the status quo. Iraqis have largely assumed this shadowy rank in the West: “unpeople” who—in the words of British historian Mark Curtis—are “deemed worthless, expendable in the pursuit of power and commercial gain.”1 This designation did not occur by chance. Media and government silence surrounding the Iraqi diaspora and the human costs of US aggression are part of a coordinated plan of exclusion. To end the silence, one must study the mechanisms that set it in place.

Favorable Objectivity In 1983, US Navy public affairs specialist Lieutenant Commander Arthur A. Humphries wrote an influential article on wartime press freedom that shaped US policy in the decades ahead. Appearing that year in the May/June issue of Naval War College Review, Humphries outlined the inherent “problems” of a free press and methods to ensure “favorable objectivity” from American press corps.2 His article had far-reaching effects on Pentagon censorship during conflict, from Grenada in 1983 to Iraq today. 88

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The notion that the US media had “lost the war” in Vietnam by demoralizing the American public weighed heavily on Humphries. According to Humphries: When relatives of servicemen see their boy, or someone who could be their boy, wounded or maimed, in living color, through imagery right in front of them, that tends to erode their support for their government’s war aims. That happened during the Vietnam war. We know what happened to public opinion as a result of repeated doses of blood and guts given to a public that wasn’t prepared to cope with it. The issue remains, then: What can a government do about that sort of problem, given the factors of high-tech communications capabilities and a worldwide public attuned to freedom of information?3

Humphries saw an ideal model in UK policy during the Falklands War, when the British imposed total media control. The British allowed a pool of only 29 journalists to accompany forces to the South Atlantic island. This arrangement enabled the English to tightly control their movements and exclude critical observers from the scene. Only a few witnessed any actual fighting. Furthermore, UK forces exercised complete control over the reporters’ copy— all dispatches were vetted prior to publication.4 Impressed by this arrangement, Humphries wrote in the Naval War College Review: In spite of a perception of choice in a democratic society, the Falklands War shows us how to make certain that government policy is not undermined by the way the war is reported... There was the potential in the South Atlantic to show the folks back home a vivid, real-life, real-time picture of men from two opposing nations on two ordinary and theretofore unimportant islands doing some very permanent, ugly things to each other. After the Vietnam Tet Offensive of

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1968, the American public, and for that matter the whole world, saw a sample of South Vietnamese-style capital punishment—a real execution of an enemy soldier, via their television sets in their own homes. That is not the sort of thing that would engender support at home for a war. If you want to maintain popular support for a war, your side must not be seen as ruthless barbarians...

The Falkland model offered a solution: “Control access to the fighting, invoke censorship, and rally aid in the form of patriotism at home and in the battle zone. Both Argentina and Great Britain showed us how to make that wisdom work.”5 While praising their overall approach, Humphries did fault the British for being too heavy-handed. The English failed “to appreciate that the news management is more than just information security censorship. It also means providing pictures.” The media must be carefully managed, he explained, not locked out completely: It is essential that a government and its military branch give regular briefings to representatives of all news organizations, as practicable, in order to sustain a relationship of trust, to foster the flow of correct information, and to halt faulty speculation. Plans should include criteria for incorporating the news media into the organization for war... Power bounces down a beam from a communications satellite and goes to the side which tells the story first. The news media can be a useful tool, or even a weapon, in prosecuting a war psychologically, so that the operators don’t have to use their more severe weapons.6

The Humphries article galvanized Reagan Administration officials in their opposition to unfettered press freedoms during wartime—never again would the press

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be allowed to “confuse” the public about government war aims. According to Ted Galen Carpenter, author of The Captive Press: Foreign Policy Crises and the First Amendment, “Humphries’s article was a blueprint for controlling media access to war zones and for managing the news that eventually emerges. It apparently received considerable attention from higher level military and civilian officials...”7 Beginning with the US invasion of Panama, the Pentagon has followed Humphries’s recommendations, with mixed results.

Managing Grenada, Panama, and Gulf War I On October 23, 1983, the United States invaded Grenada—“a flagrant violation of international law” according to the United Nations General Assembly—to oust the Marxist government of Hudson Austin. Days earlier, Austin had seized power and assassinated Grenada’s Prime Minister Maurice Bishop. “By Humphries’s standards,” wrote John R. MacArthur, author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the 1991 Gulf War, the Pentagon’s information operations in Grenada were “not handled very efficiently.” There was very little news management— only blanket censorship. Like the British in the Falklands, Washington initially locked out the media, preventing all journalists from entering the island until 48 hours after the initial invasion. Enterprising journalists attempting to charter boats and planes were turned away or detained by US military officials. Rear Admiral Joseph Metcalf, commander of the US naval task force, warned: “Any of you guys coming in on press boats? Well, I know how to stop those press

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boats. We’ve been shooting at them. We haven’t sunk any yet, but who are we to know who’s on them.”8 When journalists were finally allowed onto the island, military officials took them on tours in locations far removed from the horrors of war. Anyone caught leaving the tour group was banned from further participation. During the news blackout, the Pentagon fabricated the account of a battle, supplied wildly inaccurate figures of the number of Cuban soldiers and quantity of Soviet weapons on the island, and, as we’ll see in Chapter 4, minimized civilian body counts. In 1985, a Twentieth Century Fund report on censorship found that in Grenada the “government’s failure, at the outset, to allow an independent flow of information to the public about a major military operation was unprecedented in modern American history.” Despite the blackout, some imagery escaped the island. One courageous photographer, employed by French photo firm Sygma, managed to break away from the pool and snap the only picture from the conflict of a dead US marine—an image later featured in Time magazine. “The Pentagon flaks must have noticed,” noted MacArthur, “because they made certain it would never happen again.”9 Following Grenada, a Pentagon commission on wartime press freedoms, chaired by Major General Winant Sidle, recommended the creation of a national media pool—a small group of reporters permitted to accompany US troops during the initial phases of any military action. Prior to publication, anything deemed threatening to “mission security” was to be removed by Pentagon censors. Further, the Pentagon itself would select the participating news agencies. According to Ted Galen Carpenter: “The practical effect was to ensure a news monopoly to members of the

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mainstream media, who were unlikely to be vehement opponents of America’s interventionist foreign policy.”10 When the national pool was utilized during US naval operations in 1987 and 1988, Pentagon censors deleted several dispatches and delayed some reports for up to 24 hours. The pool system was used again during the US invasion of Panama in 1989. The initial attack, intended to oust and extradite Manuel Noriega, was largely missed by the pool. The departure of the pool from the US was delayed until two hours before the attack began, and upon their arrival journalists were held captive on a US base until major combat had ended. Unlike Grenada, not one picture of a US casualty in Panama made it to the airwaves or newspapers.11 Three years later, the pool system was utilized during the 1991 Gulf War to depict a “clean war” with few casualties. Central to the scheme was the restriction of journalists’ movements and dispatches. As recorded at the time by the Los Angeles Times: Although 1,400 reporters are now accredited in Saudi Arabia, only 100 at a time are assigned to press pools, which must be escorted by military officers; through the first 35 days of war, only about half that many reporters were out with troops at any one time. Most of the rest remained at their hotels in Dhahran, and others remained in Riyadh, where the daily military briefing is held about 300 miles from the battlefront.12

Veteran journalists were appalled by this arrangement. “This system is making it impossible to know whether the version of the war Americans are receiving can be trusted as accurate,” said Walter Cronkite. According to Stanley Cloud, a former Time magazine Washington bureau chief:

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[The Pentagon] figured out a way to control every facet of our coverage. They restricted our access to a point where we couldn’t do any of our own reporting. They fed us a steady diet of press conferences in which they decided what the news would be. And if somehow, after all that, we managed to report on something they didn’t like, they could censor it out... It amounted to recruiting the press into the military.13

Footage of “smart” bombs striking targets dominated the US military’s daily press briefings in Saudi Arabia. While laser-guided weapons constituted only seven percent of the ordnance dropped on Iraq, video released by the Pentagon depicted successful strikes in which missiles flew with precision down chimneystacks and through windows. “So far there has not been released, about this war fought in the video age, a single foot of film depicting anything resembling combat involving human beings,” wrote war correspondent Gregg Easterbrook in the New Republic in September 1991. He recalled only one brief glimpse of the human costs. According to Easterbrook: Military censors went crazy when one field commander let reporters watch a gun camera video from an Apache gunship that snuck up on an Iraqi squad. In the tape, terror-stricken teenagers rush wildly in all directions as cannon rounds from the helicopter, which they can’t see, slice their bodies in half. This video was quickly withdrawn from circulation. When I asked a senior Pentagon official why, he replied, “If we let people see that kind of thing there would never again be any war.”14

In addition to selective imagery, Vietnam-era euphemisms proliferated during the first Gulf War. Investigative journalist Martin Yant recalled “desensitizing descriptions of civilian casualties as ‘collateral damage,’ US casualties as ‘KIAs’ [Killed-in-Action] and killing as ‘attriting.’”15 A March 1991

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survey found that such terminology effectively masked the horrors of war. According to a summary of a Times Mirror Company poll: Half of those surveyed were asked if they were concerned about the amount of “collateral damage” caused by allied bombing. When the question was asked using this military euphemism for civilian casualties, 21% responded that they were very concerned and 34% said that they were fairly concerned. But the wording was changed for the other half of the sample, and the contrast in answers was striking. Asked if they were concerned about “the number of civilian casualties and other unintended damage” in Iraq, 49% reported being very concerned and 33% fairly concerned.16

A further 58 percent of Americans felt that journalists went “too far” when they ventured away from the Pentagon press pools—something which only a small handful of enterprising journalists did—while nine out of ten had a “great deal or fair amount” of confidence in the accuracy of the military’s official reports of the war. And remarkably, nearly two thirds of all Americans felt that “military censorship is more important than the media’s ability to report important news.”17 In light of such high public tolerance of censorship—along with the surge in patriotism following the 9/11 attacks—the issue of civilian casualties was further obscured during the American conflicts that were to follow.

A Double-Edged Sword At the outset, civilian casualties had no official place in America’s war on terror—an initiative centered around a

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“war of ideas.” According to the US National Strategy for Combating Terrorism: Together with the international community, we will wage a war of ideas to make clear that all acts of terrorism are illegitimate, to ensure that the conditions and ideologies that promote terrorism do not find fertile ground in any nation, to diminish the underlying conditions that terrorists seek to exploit in areas most at risk, and to kindle the hopes and aspirations of freedom of those in societies ruled by the sponsors of global terrorism.18

But the maiming and killing of innocent civilians— unavoidable aspects of war—run counter to this stated aim. “Since the essence of terrorism is the wanton lack of concern for the lives of noncombatants,” noted Slate’s Scott Shuger, “displaying that lack of concern yourself means the whole effort doesn’t just appear flawed but is flawed.”19 The Pentagon’s solution to this problem? Further sink the issue of civilian casualties in layers of spin and sophistry. As an olive branch extended to news executives immediately following the first Gulf War, the Pentagon pledged that “journalists will have access to all major military units” and that “military public affairs officers should act as liaisons but should not interfere with the reporting process.” These promises soon faded as the US invaded Afghanistan. The war began without activation of press pools, while Donald Rumsfeld threatened to prosecute any official who leaked information to the media about the attack. In late February 2002—roughly four months after the initial October 2001 invasion—the Pentagon activated its first small pool. Faced with a lack of images from the ground in Afghanistan, some news organizations sought to purchase satellite photography—a tactic that was quickly

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stamped out. In October 2001, the Pentagon spent millions of dollars buying the commercial rights to satellites orbiting over Afghanistan. The US military already operated at least seven high-definition spy satellites, but still bought exclusive access to the Ikonos civilian satellite—thus blocking news organizations or private individuals from accessing its imagery. The decision to obstruct access to images from these satellites, reported the Guardian, occurred “after reports of heavy civilian casualties from the overnight bombing of training camps near Darunta, north-west of Jalalabad.” From the imagery, noted the newspaper, “it would be possible to see bodies lying on the ground after last week’s bombing attacks.”20 Following the Gulf War model, Pentagon handlers fed selective imagery to reporters in Afghanistan through tightly controlled briefing centers. “We had greater freedom of coverage of Soviet military operations in Afghanistan than we had at Camp Rhino,” complained Walt Rodgers of CNN, referring to a US marine base camp. Added media critic Edward S. Herman: “US reporters have been cooped up at Bagrum base, with a twice daily ‘briefing’... The reporters mainly dutifully transcribing and transmitting this ‘news.’” Outside of the briefing rooms, reporters in Afghanistan were threatened while trying to report on civilian casualties. When Doug Struck of the Washington Post attempted to visit the site of a US bombing that killed scores of civilians, he was told by a US commander: “If you go further, you would be shot.” Struck later noted how the incident showed “the extremes the military is going to, to keep this war secret, to keep reporters from finding out what’s going on.” Nearly five years later, similar threats persisted. On March 4, 2007, a US soldier forced two Associated Press journalists

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to delete photos and video footage shot at the scene of a suicide bombing and shooting in eastern Afghanistan that left eight Afghans killed and 34 wounded. Pentagon officials defended the soldier’s actions, noting that photographs or video taken by “untrained people” might “capture visual details that are not as they originally were.”21 The Pentagon also railed against coverage of Afghan casualties by Arab networks, equating these networks with terrorists themselves. Al Jazeera frequently reported on civilian casualties inflicted by US bombings. On November 13, 2001, a US missile slammed into the station’s Afghanistan headquarters in Kabul. “This office has been known by everybody, the American airplanes know the location of the office, they know we are broadcasting from there,” said Al Jazeera managing director Mohammed Jasim al-Ali. He believed the office was struck deliberately—a charge the Pentagon flatly denied.22 Pentagon censorship and spin in Afghanistan proliferated, and was reinforced by a rise in self-censorship following the September 11 terrorist attacks. After 9/11, news directors shaped the news to appeal to the wave of patriotism then sweeping the country. According to Rena Golden, then executive vice-president and general manager of CNN International, American news media blatantly distorted their coverage of the 2001 Afghanistan invasion. “Anyone who claims the US media didn’t censor itself is kidding you,” she said in August 2002. It wasn’t a matter of government pressure but a reluctance to criticize anything in a war that was obviously supported by the vast majority of the people. And this isn’t just a CNN issue—every journalist who was in any way involved in 9/11 is partly responsible.

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Added online commentator and activist, Kurt Nimmo: While many journalists complained about military imposed censorship during the Persian Gulf War a decade ago, it now appears the corporate media has decided on its own to censor the news without external limitation imposed by the Pentagon. In other words, the corporate media has in essence become a rather short-sighted and assentive propaganda organ for the Bush administration. Remarkably, they attribute this lapdog conversion to a desire not to offend public opinion, which they arrogantly assume is entirely monolithic. It would seem CNN is now the official government news agency.23

Self-censorship played out both on television and in print. In “Framing Visual News: The 9/11 Attacks & the War in Afghanistan in English & Arabic Newspapers,” Shahira Fahmy studied coverage of the invasion from September 12, 2001 to November 15, 2001 by two newspapers, the International Herald Tribune and Al-Hayat (“Life”). According to Fahmy: The International Herald Tribune showed a more benign coverage that significantly differed from its Arabic-language counterpart. The International Herald Tribune published very few images of destruction—5 images—as opposed to 20 images in the Arabic newspaper. And while Al-Hayat newspaper published six images of casualties and death, it is quite striking that The International Herald Tribune published none. By the same token, dissimilar to Al-Hayat newspaper that published no images of US humanitarian aid—identified as such in the caption— The International Herald Tribune published 3 images. Moreover, results suggest that Al-Hayat newspaper tried to engage its readers by showing significantly more images of everyday life in Afghanistan—36 images—as opposed to only three photographs in The International Herald Tribune.24

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As the Bush Administration turned its sights from Afghanistan to Iraq, the double-edged sword of Western media self-censorship, and outright censorship by the Pentagon, systematically excised Iraqi narratives. The experience of Helen Thomas, considered the grande doyenne of the White House press corps, is telling. Thomas covered every President since John F. Kennedy, but was intensely disliked by the Bush Administration because of her confrontational questions. By 2003, she was banished to the back row along with the “dot coms and other oddballs,” recalled then White House spokesperson Air Fleischer. According to Fleischer, reporters like Thomas who posed difficult questions were seated in “Siberia,” while those friendly to the administration were placed “in the grid in front of” the president. But on March 21, 2006—for reasons yet unexplained—Bush called upon Thomas for the first time in three years. Thomas asked a direct question about the war in Iraq and a heated exchange ensued: HELEN THOMAS: I’d like to ask you, Mr. President, your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds [sic] of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is, why did you really want to go to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, from your Cabinet—your Cabinet officers, intelligence people, and so forth—what was your real reason? You have said it wasn’t oil— quest for oil, it hasn’t been Israel, or anything else. What was it? THE PRESIDENT: I think your premise—in all due respect to your question and to you as a lifelong journalist—is that—I didn’t want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong, Helen, in all due respect— HELEN THOMAS: Everything— THE PRESIDENT: Hold on for a second, please.

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HELEN THOMAS: —everything I’ve heard— THE PRESIDENT: Excuse me, excuse me. No President wants war. Everything you may have heard is that, but it’s just simply not true. My attitude about the defense of this country changed on September the 11th. We—when we got attacked, I vowed then and there to use every asset at my disposal to protect the American people.

The exchange prompted several conservative commentators, including Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly, to attack Thomas on-air. O’Reilly called the question “absurd” and “out of bounds” and even went so far as to say that if he was Bush he would have “laid her out.” Karen Hanretty, on MSNBC, railed: “Helen Thomas is the embodiment of Howard Dean, George Soros, Cindy Sheehan, everything that is vitriolic and assertive.” MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson announced to his viewers that “reporter-turned-propagandist Helen Thomas uses a White House press conference to air her political views.” And in the words of shock-jock radio personality Don Imus, “The old bag should shut up and get out. I’m sick of her.”25 While Thomas took a beating from right-wing pundits, she reserved her anger for her colleagues. According to Thomas, 9/11 caused members of the White House press corps to become “afraid of being un-American, unpatriotic.” Reporters should ask: “Look, you said this yesterday and you’re saying this now... How can you approach the American people with this?” After all, Thomas added, “We’re supposed to be an informed people. We can handle the truth.”26 Thomas joins a growing chorus of journalists and former insiders who have identified a disturbing trend of timid

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self-censorship. According to Scott McClellan, former Bush press secretary turned critic: The national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.27

Jessica Yellin, a CNN correspondent who covered the White House for ABC News and MSNBC in 2002 and 2003, seconded McClellan’s views, blaming news managers for the censorship. As she discussed on CNN’s 360 with Anderson Cooper: When the lead-up to the war began, the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings. And my own experience at the White House was that, the higher the president’s approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives—and I was not at this network [CNN] at the time—but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president... They would push me in different directions. They would turn down stories that were more critical and try to put on pieces that were more positive... That was my experience.28

Like Yellin, CBS’s Katie Couric discussed how she felt “corporate pressure” to avoid criticism of the Bush Administration. “I think there was a lot of undercurrent of pressure not to rock the boat for a variety of reasons, where it was corporate reasons or other considerations,” she said in 2007. Long-time US television host Phil Donahue was actually fired from his job at MSNBC over his criticism of Bush’s case for war in Iraq. According to a leaked NBC

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memo, Donahue’s show was cancelled because he presented a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war... He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration’s motives.” Weeks later, Donahue was replaced by Michael Savage—a fierce supporter of the Bush Administration. Fellow MSNBC journalist, Ashleigh Banfield, noted that Iraq War coverage “wasn’t journalism” because “there are horrors that were completely left out of this war.” She added: Free speech is a wonderful thing, it’s what we fight for, but the minute it’s unpalatable we fight against it for some reason. That just seems to be a trend of late, and I am worried that it may be a reflection of what the news was and how the news coverage was coming across.29

What specifically was excluded from coverage? While there were exceptions, most Western outlets spent little time exposing the impact of the war on Iraqi civilians and refugees. As noted by non-partisan US media watchdog, FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting): “Despite daily reports about the ‘showdown’ with Iraq, Americans hear very little from mainstream media about the most basic fact of war: People will be killed and civilian infrastructure will be destroyed, with devastating consequences for public health long after the fighting stops.” FAIR surveyed pre-invasion coverage of Iraq from January 1 to March 12, 2003, and found that none of the three major television networks’ nightly national newscasts— ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News or NBC Nightly News—have examined in detail what long-term impact war will have on humanitarian conditions in Iraq and downplayed the immediate civilian deaths that will be caused by a US attack.30

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Networks did make scattered references to civilian casualties, but quickly preempted any attribution of US responsibility. “If there are going to be heavy civilian casualties, they’ll mainly be caused by the Iraqis,” said NBC Nightly News reporter Campbell Brown. Meanwhile, ABC News reporter Claire Shipman stressed that Saddam Hussein is “somebody who’s happy to kill his own people,” adding that he might “starve thousands of his own people, destroy their infrastructures, even cities in order to slow down US troops, and then blame the United States.” According to ABC reporter John Donovan: “Even if Saddam is the source of so many of the Iraqi people’s problems, very likely it’s the US the world would choose to blame.”31 Such one-sided reportage reinforced the notion that the conflict in Iraq would be a “clean” war and that casualties would not be the fault of the US—preposterous claims both then and now.

Embedded Perspectives The bloodless narratives of Iraq provided by the Pentagon and the mainstream media merged together as journalists were “embedded” with invading US troops. The military’s embedding program allowed journalists to “ride along” with soldiers and observe their missions up close. The practice was seen by some as an admirable exercise in war journalism. In Newsweek, for example, Jonathan Alter gushed that embedding gave the “press more access than in any conflict since Vietnam.” The Pentagon, he added, “deserves credit for devising about as good a solution to the logistics of combat coverage as the press could ask for.” While embedding did offer war zone journalists greater physical security, there were many downsides. As David

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Miller of Media Lens noted at the start of the 2003 war, embeds “will not be allowed to travel independently... These new rules mean that journalists will don military uniform and protective clothing and, the Pentagon hopes, start to identify with the military.”32 Not every journalist chose to be embedded with US troops, but most did. At the start of the invasion there were 903 journalists embedded with US and UK forces, while only about 150 unembedded journalists roamed Baghdad. A 2006 study analyzing 452 articles from American newspapers found that these embedded reporters— compared to unembedded journalists—produced coverage more sympathetic to the military and “implied a greater trust toward military personnel.” Another 2006 study which analyzed 742 news articles written between March 19, 2003 and May 1, 2003 found similar biases. Andrew M. Lindner, the study’s author, found that embedded journalists used a soldier as a source in 93 percent of all articles, more than twice as frequently as free-ranging independent journalists and nearly three times more frequently than journalists based in Baghdad. In turn, only 12 percent of the stories by embedded journalists reported civilian fatalities, compared with half of those written by reporters stationed in Baghdad and 30 percent of those written by independent journalists. Furthermore, Baghdad-based journalists and independent journalists used three times more Iraqi sources than embedded journalists, and wrote four times as many Iraqi human-interest stories than embeds.33 While stories by embedded journalists featured the fewest Iraqi sources, the fewest Iraqi human-interest stories, and the least civilian fatality coverage, they were the most frequently printed in American newspapers. Lindner found

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that 71 percent of the stories published on the front pages of America’s top newspapers came from embedded reporters. Breaking down the numbers by paper, Lindner found that 60 percent of the Los Angeles Times’s stories came from embedded reporters, 40 percent were written by Baghdad-stationed reporters, and none were by independent journalists. The Washington Post, Lindner found, acquired 55 percent of its articles from embedded reporters, 29 percent from independents, and 15 percent from reporters working in Baghdad. The New York Times was the only paper analyzed that used a majority of stories (52 percent) from independent sources, along with 37 percent from embedded reporters and 12 percent from the Baghdad-based group. This contrasted starkly with the figures for USA Today, America’s top-selling newspaper. One hundred percent of USA Today’s articles from Iraq, during the period analyzed, came from embedded reporters. According to Lindner, the pervasive embed reportage guaranteed the generation of coverage that “heavily emphasized the soldier’s experiences of the war while downplaying the effects of the invasion on the Iraqi people.” Thus an administration that hoped to build support for the war by depicting it as a successful mission with limited costs was able to do so through the embed program and without some of the more heavy-handed propaganda efforts of Operation Desert Storm.34

The ability of embedded reportage to reflect the human costs of war depended largely on the integrity of the journalist. One reporter who lived among troops—but managed to see the effects that they were having on Iraqi people—was Rolling Stone’s Evan Wright, who embedded with the 1st Marine Division’s reconnaissance battalion.

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In a cluster of mud-hut homes across from the platoon’s position, he wrote during the marines’ advance toward Baghdad, old ladies in black robes stood outside “staring at the pale, white ass of a Marine” who, naked from the waist down, was “taking a dump in their front yard.” A marine then commented to Wright: “Can you imagine if this was reversed, and some army came into suburbia and was crapping in everyone’s front lawns? It’s fucking wild.” Days later, following a marine assault on Nasiriya, Wright meticulously catalogued civilian deaths. On the road leading out of the city, he observed the corpses, many of which were mangled by a passing convoy. The bodies, he wrote, were “flattened, with their entrails squished out.” He added: We pass a bus, smashed and burned, with charred human remains sitting upright in some windows. There’s a man in the road with no head and a dead little girl, too, about three or four, lying on her back. She’s wearing a dress and has no legs.35

According to Wright, in Iraq the shooting of civilians was justified in the sense that there were some civilian buses that had Fedayeen fighters in them... But when you see a little girl in pretty clothes that someone dressed her in, and she’s smushed on the road with her legs cut off, you don’t think, well you know there were Fedayeen nearby and this is collateral damage.

Informing his work, Wright later said, was the belief that most Americans’ view of war “is too sanitized.”36

Collective Self-Censorship Evan Wright’s original Rolling Stone articles were later collected in his book, Generation Kill, which in turn was

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adapted as a seven-episode HBO television miniseries. But good embedded reportage on civilian casualties did not always guarantee wide readership or broad influence. On January 18, 2005, for example, US soldiers opened fire on a car in Tal Afar when its driver did not stop the vehicle after warning shots were fired. A mother and father in the front seats were killed—their five children remained unharmed in the backseat. Chris Hondros, a photographer with Getty Images, was embedded with the 25th Infantry Division that fired the fatal shots. After shooting a series of photographs featuring the pained screams of the orphaned Iraqi children, leaders of the unit sought to delay Hondros from sending the images to his editors. “They never asked me to censor,” Hondros emphasized, “they asked me to delay.” Knowing that delay can mean the photos arrive too late to ever be used, Hondros sent the entire Tal Afar series to editors in the US, but only a few newspapers published the shots. By contrast, Hondros said, those photographs “seemingly dominated the discourse in Europe, where they were run in full over multiple pages by many important papers there.”37 In 2003, the Washington Post’s William Branigin encountered a similar response to a report which highlighted discrepancies between a Pentagon account of civilian killings and the version provided by eyewitnesses. On April 1, 2003, Branigin reported “a gruesome scene on highway 9” that led to the deaths of ten Iraqis, including five children under five years old. Branigin—who was present during the attack— reported that soldiers failed to let off a warning shot prior to opening fire. “You just [expletive] killed a family because you didn’t fire a warning shot soon enough!” screamed Captain Ronny Johnson, according to Branigin’s gripping account. Still, a majority of American newspapers and news programs

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failed to report on this crucial detail. Instead, most papers simply ran the Pentagon version of events—that the van did not heed the marines’ warning shots. For example, a New York Times story about the episode, running one day after the initial Washington Post account, simply stated—citing the Pentagon’s official version of events—that “soldiers fired warning shots to stop the van, then fired into the engine, but that the van continued forward, forcing troops to fire into the passenger compartment.” Likewise, a full 18 hours after the Washington Post account was published, National Public Radio reported: What we’re hearing here at CENTCOM [United States Central Command] is that troops fired a warning shot as a vehicle approached a checkpoint. The vehicle did not stop. It then fired at the engine block. The vehicle continued. And then they fired in the passenger compartment and they killed seven women and children.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Houston Chronicle included similar versions of the events. Oddly, a Washington Post follow-up story by a different journalist included the Pentagon’s—not Branigin’s—account. According to FAIR, only a handful of newspapers—the New York Daily News, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle—noted the crucial discrepancy.38 American papers also ignored sound reportage by the Independent’s Robert Fisk, an unembedded journalist who has written some of the war’s most probing accounts of Iraqi civilian casualties. On March 28, 2003, for instance, over 60 Iraqis were killed by an errant missile strike in the Shuala district of Baghdad. New York Times coverage of the attack was typical of the US media response. The next day, the Times noted that “a missile slammed into a crowded

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market area” and that “it was impossible to determine the cause,” adding that “a Central Command spokesman in Qatar said Friday night that the United States could not tell what caused the bombing on Friday.” Fisk visited the scene and personally recovered a missile fragment, whose serial number he published on March 30, 2003. Days later, fellow Independent journalist Cahal Milmo traced the serial number to the Raytheon Corporation and reported that the weapon was “thought to be either a HARM anti-radar missile or a Paveway laser-guided bomb.” From sources at the Pentagon, Milmo also learned that a US EA-6B Prowler jet flying over Baghdad on the day of the attack “fired at least one HARM missile to protect two American fighters from a surface-to-air missile battery.”39 Despite these revelations, the US media continued to parrot the Pentagon line. On April 4, 2003, the New York Times’s Robert Burns did not cite the reports of Fisk and Milmo, and instead cast blame on the Iraqis. Iraqi officials, he noted, “have delayed taking reporters to the site for hours, and have met with evasions the inquiries about the unusually small crater at the marketplace...” Likewise, on National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation on April 2, 2003, host Neal Conan explained that US military officials still could not find any evidence that the bombing was caused by a US weapon. “It may be some time, if ever, before we actually know what happened there,” he said.40 Photographs of injured or dying US soldiers—main protagonists of the war—are also subject to collective selfcensorship by news outlets in the United States. From March 2003 to July 2008, American newspapers published fewer than half a dozen photos of dead US soldiers. In 2005, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer John B. Moore was given brief access to a US military hospital in Baghdad,

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where he photographed injured and maimed soldiers. He was careful to exclude any identifying characteristics, as per Pentagon policy. “We made an effort not to show the faces,” said Santiago Lyon, director of photography for the Associated Press, but when we sent them out, in the US a lot of major papers chose not to run them. Those papers and other media subscribe to our feed. They’re paying a flat rate, and can run as many or as few as they choose. In this case, they chose not to.

Pictures of injured US soldiers taken by former Newsday photojournalist Moises Saman were also rarely published. “Americans understand we are at war—but not many people want to see the real consequences, especially when they involve one of your own,” he said. “I think some publications cater to this sentiment by trying not to anger subscribers and advertisers with harsh ‘in-your-face’ coverage of the true nature of war.”41 In addition to self-censorship, photojournalists faced direct Pentagon censorship. For 18 years, the Pentagon banned all photography of flag-draped coffins arriving into Dover Air Force Base in Delaware—a policy that was overturned only in February 2009. In 2008, the Associated Press’s Bradley Brooks was expelled from northern Iraq for simply speaking with soldiers who were loading coffins from a Humvee onto a US-bound plane. According to Pentagon officials, he had broken a “new rule” that forbade embedded journalists from reporting while in transit to their waiting unit. The experience of Zoriah Miller, a freelance photographer, was similar. “You’re a war photographer, but once you take a picture of what war is like then you get into trouble,” said Miller. In June 2008, Miller posted

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online a selection of graphic photos of marines killed by a suicide bomber in Falluja. Even though he cropped out all identifying characteristics, just a few hours later a US official told him to remove the blog post. When Miller refused, his embed status was revoked. After Miller challenged Pentagon officials, they charged that he provided “detailed information of the effectiveness of the attack” and therefore “put all US forces in Iraq at greater risk for harm.” Amid the publicity surrounding his case, Miller was given back his press credentials, but he is still barred from documenting US marine operations. As Miller later asked: “How can things change if all that comes out of Iraq are sanitized images of the war designed for mainstream media outlets who focus on making money, not on the quality and truth in what they report?”42

Carry Our Water While the media was embedded in the US military, the military also embedded itself into the media. From 2002–2008, the Pentagon maintained a covert operation aimed at manipulating domestic public opinion. The Pentagon’s “military analyst” program consisted of up to 70 former generals who maintained strong professional and commercial ties to the Pentagon. The analysts were briefed by their Pentagon handlers on specific talking points that they were to push when interviewed by major news networks or radio stations. The analysts were introduced by the networks as independent, but they delivered the lines provided to them by Pentagon information officers. Those that peddled the official spin were given greater access to Pentagon officials (thereby raising their lucrative media

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status), while those that did not were stripped of their insider access. According to a declassified memo sent in early 2005 from Captain Roxie T. Merritt, the director of Pentagon press operations, to several top Pentagon officials: more and more, media analysts are having a greater impact on the television media network coverage of military issues. They have now become the go to guys not only for breaking stories, but they influence the views on issues. They also have a huge amount of influence on what stories the network decides to cover proactively with regard to the military... I recommend we develop a core group from within our media analysts list of those that we can count on to carry our water... By providing them with key and valuable information, they become the key go to guys for the networks and it begins to weed out the less reliably friendly analysts by the networks themselves.43

The analysts appeared or were quoted more than 4500 times on network newscasts, cable news networks and on National Public Radio. Dubbed by Pentagon officials as “message force multipliers,” the generals bolstered the Bush Administration’s case for war, praised the military’s conduct in Iraq, and echoed the government position on a range of issues including Guantanamo Bay and warrantless wiretapping.44 While the analyst program was suspended once its existence was made public, other Pentagon “perception management” initiatives are still active. For example, public affairs officers distribute and post videos directly to YouTube depicting swift, decisive, and bloodless US air strikes on enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan. “You want to make sure you edit it in the right way,” said Major Alayne Conway, the top public affairs officer for the 3rd Infantry Division stationed in Iraq. While editing video, he

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asks himself, “Is this something that is going to make Joe Six-Pack look up from his TV dinner or his fast-food meal and look up at the TV and say, ‘Wow, the American troops are kicking butt in Iraq?’” In addition to distributing battle clips, public affairs officers operate a “Blogger Roundtable” program, where bloggers sympathetic to the military are invited to interact with top-ranking Pentagon officials. The Department of Defense also operates the “Hometown News Service,” an initiative that aims to produce, in 2009 alone, at least 5400 press releases, 3000 television releases, and 1600 radio interviews for media outlets across the US. In sum, the Pentagon spends $550 million on domestic “perception management.” “There is no place for spin at the Department of Defense,” said Robert Hastings, acting director of Pentagon public affairs, in defense of his program. “The role of public affairs is to provide you the information so that you can make an informed decision yourself.”45 Carl Conetta of the Project on Defense Alternatives, the security policy research arm of the non-profit Commonwealth Institute, analyzed hundreds of news articles, speeches and transcripts to assess how the Pentagon manipulated the national debate on the war. Conetta found that the Defense Department pushed four misleading propositions regarding Iraqi civilian casualties in an effort to minimize the constraints which they believed that negative public opinion can impose on the war effort. While these four propositions may reflect some truth, they have a “limited utility in clarifying the problem and likelihood of collateral damage,” wrote Conetta. “To the extent that they are accepted uncritically or wholesale, they serve to distort the national discussion on war and its repercussions.”46

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The first and most potent proposition held that “US precision attack capabilities have revolutionized warfare, making it possible to wage war with greatly reduced casualties and collateral damage.”47 This proposition was well articulated in an April 2003 speech by George W. Bush: We’ve applied the new powers of technology ... to strike an enemy force with speed and incredible precision. By a combination of creative strategies and advanced technologies, we are redefining war on our terms. In this new era of warfare, we can target a regime, not a nation.48

This proposition—repeated ad nauseum by White House, Pentagon and State Department spokespersons—gained deep traction with the US and UK media. As Conetta recorded: Headlines extolled Operation Iraqi Freedom as exemplifying a “new way of war” (Copley News Service, 03/20/03), a “new art of war” (Daily Standard, 04/03/03), or a “new style of war” (Baltimore Sun, 04/13/03) in which “precision bombing” (NYT, 02/02/03), “precision weapons” (Baltimore Sun, 02/24/03), “pinpoint targeting” (Financial Times, 06/16/03), and “pinpoint attack” (London Times, 09/23/02) would “hit hard, hit fast, and protect civilians” (Baltimore Sun, 02/24/03). This makes it possible to wage war while “sparing civilians, buildings, and even the enemy” (op-ed, NYT, 03/30/03) or “sparing the country and its people” (Minneapolis Star Tribune, 04/27/03).49

But does advanced weaponry really save lives? Not necessarily. As noted by Conetta, during the age of “precision warfare” (beginning with the first Gulf War), US military operations have claimed the lives of approximately 50,000 people worldwide (combatants and noncombatants), while during the 14 years preceding the first Gulf War (1976-1989), overt US operations claimed the lives of approximately 2,000 people.50

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While a laser-guided bomb may repeatedly hit its target under controlled tests, an array of real-world factors dictate the deadly impact that a “smart” weapon may have in an actual war. These include human error, mechanical malfunction, software error, fluctuating accuracy of global positioning systems, weather, and poor military intelligence. These factors—combined with the inherently destructive nature of bombs and the chaotic reality of war—ensure that civilian deaths will occur. For example, these factors shaped the US military’s “shock and awe” campaign at the start of the invasion—rendering it an utter failure despite the use of precision weapons. According to Human Rights Watch: All of the fifty acknowledged attacks targeting Iraqi leadership failed. While they did not kill a single targeted individual, the strikes killed and injured dozens of civilians. Iraqis who spoke to Human Rights Watch about the attacks it investigated repeatedly stated that they believed the intended targets were not even present at the time of the strikes.51

Civilian deaths would have occurred even if the precision weapons had hit their intended victims. From 2003–2008, the average number of people killed by US air strikes in Iraq each year was 17—a figure similar to the average number of civilians killed by suicide bombers on foot (16 deaths per attack). Further, 46 percent of air attack victims were female, while 39 percent were children. Given “a 2000-pound bomb will carve a crater 50 feet across and 16 feet deep,” noted Conetta, civilian casualties resulting from the use of “precision” weapons are virtually unavoidable.52 Despite this fact, the Pentagon—in the second major proposition identified by Conetta—stressed that “they are doing the best they can to spare the innocent and more than anyone else has done before.” This proposition is misleading

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because killed civilians are factored into Pentagon plans, not excluded from them. In all military engagements there is an allowable and expected degree of civilian death. “The magic number was 30,” recalled Marc Garlasco, chief of targeting at the start of the war. “That means that if you hit 30 as the anticipated number of civilians killed, the air strike had to go to Rumsfeld or Bush personally to sign off.” According to the New York Times, more than 50 such strikes were approved during the opening days of the war. But, if the expected number of civilian deaths was less than 30, neither the president nor the secretary of defense needed to know about it. As noted by Salon’s Mark Benjamin, “these rules mean that killing civilians is legal—as long as the deaths are the result of a strike at a legitimate military target.”53 While the Pentagon may strive to avoid killing civilians, their deaths are not accidents. Pentagon officials also emphasized that the number of casualties is “not especially meaningful in assessing the success or progress of a war effort”—the third proposition identified by Conetta. For example, when asked to assess Iraqi civilian and military losses, Central Command spokesperson Captain Frank Thorp insisted “that number may not be an indication of anything.” Other benchmarks, such as whether the enemy was being defeated in particular geographical regions of Iraq, the strength of the new Iraqi Army, or the rate of de-Baathification, were considered by the Pentagon to be far more important issues than civilian deaths. In this Pentagon proposition, largely adopted by mainstream media, the suffering of Iraqis—for whom the war was ostensibly waged—was omitted completely. While other factors are relevant in the reporting of conflicts, noted

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Conetta, casualty estimates are crucial if journalism is to “help the public appreciate the cost of war.”54 The Pentagon’s fourth and final proposition on human costs held that “the number of war casualties cannot be known with certainty.” As we will see in Chapter 4, this Vietnam-era notion still proliferates despite a myriad of methods available for the assessment of actual body counts. Headlines such as “Civilian Casualties Mount but Tallies Difficult to Assess” (Boston Globe), “Number of Casualties Killed May Never be Known” (Seattle Times) and “Tallying Iraq Casualties Pure Guesswork” (CBS News) reveal that news outlets give credence to this misleading premise. Taken together, all four Pentagon propositions shroud the issue of Iraqi civilian casualties in confusion, and impede “a full appreciation of war’s blood cost and of its repercussions, thus making a sober assessment of the war option more difficult.” Without a sound accounting of the human costs of war, concluded Conetta, “a true cost-benefit analysis of a war is impossible.”55

Shaping Falluja Although the Pentagon was largely successful in having American news networks “carry their water,” Arab news outlets with global reach proved more difficult to contain. In December 2007, a secret Pentagon intelligence report highlighting concerns with the Qatar-based Al Jazeera network was leaked to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. The internal Pentagon assessment, originally marked “SECRET/NOFORN” (meaning it was not to be distributed to US allies), blamed Al Jazeera, among other factors, for the “relative failure of the first Battle of

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Fallujah”—the April 2004 US siege that killed roughly 600 civilians and displaced hundreds of thousands of the city’s 280,000 residents.56 Like the 1983 Humphries article in Naval War College Review on wartime press freedom, this document provides a lens through which to view Pentagon practice and policy regarding media coverage of civilian casualties in Iraq. Troubles in Falluja began in April 2003 when the US nd 82 Airborne converted a school into a military command post, barring all students from the site. On April 28, soldiers opened fire on a crowd of students protesting the move, killing over a dozen and wounding 75. Two days later, three more people were killed and 16 were wounded while protesting the initial killings. Chris Hughes of the Daily Mirror was present during the second event: I watched in horror as American troops opened fire on a crowd of one thousand unarmed people here yesterday. Many, including children, were cut down by a twenty-second burst of automatic gunfire during a demonstration against the killing of thirteen protesters at the Al Kaahd school on Monday.57

The April 2003 killings sparked tit-for-tat violence between US troops and Fallujans, culminating in the March 31, 2004 killings of four security guards employed by the private American military company Blackwater. Images of the contractors’ charred remains strung up on a Fallujan bridge were relayed across the globe. “Fallujah had become a symbol of resistance that dominated international headlines,” noted the leaked Pentagon intelligence report. To save face, Donald Rumsfeld, US Commander John Abizaid, and Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) head Paul Bremer decided to immediately launch an attack. On

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April 1, 2003, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the US military in Iraq, promised reporters: “We will pacify that city.”58 Over the next few days the Pentagon conducted “shaping operations”—marines established a cordon around the city, announced an impending attack, and allowed only women, children and the elderly to leave. All “military aged males”—numbering in the tens of thousands—were held back at the checkpoints. On April 5, 2004, roughly 2000 marines launched a ground assault on the city from all sides, supported by more than 1000 air strikes, to rid Falluja of an estimated 500 to 1000 “insurgents.” According to the Pentagon report: “The very short time allowed for shaping operations before the fight resulted in a battlefield full of civilians at the start of the fighting.” In other words, hundreds of thousands of civilians were trapped in the crossfire. By April 9, 2004, Abizaid halted full-scale ground operations, though the “cease-fire was a bit of a misnomer,” noted the report.59 US air strikes and marine sharpshooting persisted until the end of April, at which time US forces announced a unilateral ceasefire, retreated from the city and handed security back to Fallujans and the Iraqi army. After 26 days of fighting, 18 marines were killed within Falluja while another 96 were injured. A conservative estimate by the group Iraq Body Count found that roughly 600 of 800 reported Iraqi deaths were civilians—300 of these being women and children. The Pentagon later reported that the typical marine sniper logged 31 kills in Falluja—one kill every three or four hours while on duty.60 The “SECRET/NOFORN” Pentagon assessment, authored by the Army’s National Ground Intelligence Center, dwelled heavily on the concept of IO, or information

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operations. According to the report, “Arab satellite news channels were crucial to building political pressure to halt military operations.” It continued: Information operations are increasingly important in a 21st Century world where cable television runs 24 hours a day and the Internet offers propaganda opportunities for insurgent and terrorist groups. The media presence on the battlefield was controlled by the enemy; consequently, they shaped much of the information the world viewed during the fight.

The report singled out an Al Jazeera crew who managed to smuggle themselves into the city days before the siege. In the Pentagon’s view: During the first week of April, insurgents invited a reporter from Al Jazeera, Ahmed Mansour [sic], and his film crew into Fallujah where they filmed scenes of dead babies from the hospital, presumably killed by Coalition air strikes. Comparisons were made to the Palestinian Intifada. Children were shown bespattered with blood; mothers were shown screaming and mourning day after day.61

Top Al Jazeera correspondent Ahmed Mansur, his cameraman Laith Mushtaq, and an assistant entered the city on April 3, 2004. According to Mushtaq: My going to Fallujah was voluntarily on my part as a photographer, and we were asked [by Al Jazeera editors] who was willing to go to Fallujah, so I did that, because I’m keen to transfer and report and picture and photograph.

Mushtaq and colleague Mansur shot more than 55 hours of footage in Falluja—the only live images captured from inside the city during the early days of the siege. Mushtaq recalled: The first day of the siege—the first two days, rather, we were unable to go even to the bathroom, because in Fallujah, the city is West Iraq, the bathroom is usually outside the rooms, so whenever we opened the door

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to go to the bathroom, we see the laser pointed at us, the sniper guns, and there’s only 50 meters between us and them.62

The Al Jazeera crew had good reason to fear for their lives. To date, 341 media workers have died in Iraq— including a number of Al Jazeera employees. Nearly a year before the Falluja siege, on April 2, 2003, Al Jazeera offices in Basra were shelled, and on April 7, 2003 a car bearing Al Jazeera markings was shot at by US soldiers. The next day the United States military launched nearly simultaneous attacks on the Baghdad offices of Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV. While reporters at Abu Dhabi TV escaped injury from small arms fire, an air strike killed Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Ayoub and injured another employee. Strikes later that same day upon the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad killed another two journalists: Taras Protsyuk of Reuters and Jose Couso of the Spanish network Telecino.63 Undaunted, on April 9, 2004, the Al Jazeera team in Falluja traveled into the center of the city. When they arrived, Mansur recalled: We found that Fallujah entirely—children, women, elderly, all lifting white flags and walking or in their cars leaving the city. It was really a disastrous day for us. When we reached the heart of the city at the hospital, I almost lost my mind from the terror that I saw, people going in each and every direction. Laith was with me and also another colleague, and I felt like we need 1,000 cameras to grab those disastrous pictures: fear, terror, planes bombing, ambulances taking the people dead. And I was shouting and yelling for Laith and my other colleague, and I was shouting, ‘Camera! Camera!’ so that we can take pictures here and there.

Of the countless inhumanities witnessed and recorded, Mushtaq later recalled one scene that was impossible to forget:

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I was sitting to smoke for a moment, and I saw an elderly lady coming with her children, going in a big truck to leave Fallujah or try to leave Fallujah. After a quarter of an hour, she came back as pieces, and even people, the—when they opened the ambulance and I was photographing that, the minute the medics saw the body, they took us back stand from the gruesomeness of the scenery. One of them, I remember, was standing by. He said, in typical a Iraqi dialect, he said, “Be brave. Be honorable people. Imagine this is your mom. Will you leave her alone? Will you abandon her?” So people took her, and they tried to bury her.64

The Al Jazeera broadcasts from Falluja infuriated Pentagon officials. On April 11, 2004, Brigadier General Kimmitt had this suggestion for Iraqis who saw televised reports of American killings in Falluja: “Change the channel to a legitimate, authoritative, honest news station. The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources. That is propaganda, and that is lies.” On April 13, CPA spokesperson Dan Senor added: “We have reason to believe that several news organizations do not engage in truthful reporting. In fact it is no reporting.”65 On April 15, Rumsfeld exclaimed: I can definitively say that what Al Jazeera is doing is vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable... You know what our forces do; they don’t go around killing hundreds of civilians. That’s just outrageous nonsense. It’s disgraceful what that station is doing.66

The next day—according to a UK memo obtained by the Daily Mirror—George W. Bush met with Tony Blair to discuss, among other items, Al Jazeera reportage. According to the Mirror, Bush “wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere ... [but] Blair replied that would cause a

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big problem.” The Mirror added: “There’s no doubt what Bush wanted to do—and no doubt Blair didn’t want him to do it.”67 Pentagon officials and politicians were not the only ones angered by Al Jazeera—American news outlets were critical as well. When CNN anchor Daryn Kagan interviewed Al Jazeera’s editor-in-chief Ahmed al-Sheikh on April 12, 2004, she criticized him for his station’s coverage of civilian casualties in Falluja. Citing Pentagon officials, she asked al-Sheikh if he agreed “the pictures and the reporting that Al Jazeera put on the air only adds to the sense of frustration and anger and adds to the problems in Iraq, rather than helping to solve them.” Al-Sheikh defended his station’s reportage as “accurate” because it reflected “what takes place on the ground.” Unsatisfied, Kagan pressed on: “Isn’t the story, though, bigger than just the simple numbers, with all due respect to the Iraqi civilians who have lost their lives?” According to Kagan, the story should focus on “what the Iraqi insurgents are doing, in addition to what is the response from the US military.” Media watchdog FAIR pounced on the exchange. “When reports from the ground are describing hundreds of civilians being killed by US forces [in Falluja],” said FAIR, “CNN should be looking to Al Jazeera’s footage to see if it corroborates those accounts—not badgering Al Jazeera’s editor about why he doesn’t suppress that footage.”68 While mainstream US news outlets ignored and even criticized Al Jazeera reportage, corroborative accounts of the carnage in Falluja were available online. Dahr Jamail is a former Alaskan mountain guide who grew so disillusioned with US media coverage of the war that he traveled to Iraq in 2003 to provide online reports on the situation. Jamail

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and his fellow bloggers, Rahul Mahajan and Jo Wilding, met up in Iraq and decided to enter Falluja on April 10, 2004 to bring in medical aid, help evacuate survivors, and report from the scene. The trio traveled along treacherous back roads, unguarded by marines, in order to reach the city. Once inside, Jamail and the others located a small clinic that was receiving patients. Jamail recalled: One victim of the US military aggression after another was brought into the clinic, nearly all of them women and children. Those who had not been hit by bombs from warplanes had been shot by US snipers. The one functioning ambulance left at this clinic sat outside with bullet holes in the sides and a small group of shots right on the driver side of the windshield. The driver, his head bandaged from being grazed by the bullet of a sniper, refused to go collect any more of the dead and wounded.

Maki, the director of the clinic, explained to Jamail: They [US soldiers] shot the ambulance and they shot the driver after they checked his car, inspected his car, and knew that he was carrying nothing. Then they shot him. And then they shot the ambulance. And now I have no ambulance to evacuate more than twenty wounded people. I don’t know who is doing this and why he is doing this. This is terrible. This has never happened before. And I don’t know who to call because it seems that nobody is listening.69

Jo Wilding reported on her blog what she saw at the clinic alongside Jamail. The clinic, she wrote, was a private doctor’s surgery treating people free since air strikes destroyed the town’s main hospital. Another has been improvised in a car garage. There’s no anaesthetic. The blood bags are in a drinks fridge and the doctors warm them up under the hot tap in an unhygienic toilet.

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Screaming women come in, praying, slapping their chests and faces. Ummi, my mother, one cries. I hold her until Maki, a consultant and acting director of the clinic, brings me to the bed where a child of about ten is lying with a bullet wound to the head. A smaller child is being treated for a similar injury in the next bed. A US sniper hit them and their grandmother as they left their home to flee Falluja. The lights go out, the fan stops and in the sudden quiet someone holds up the flame of a cigarette lighter for the doctor to carry on operating by. The electricity to the town has been cut off for days and when the generator runs out of petrol they just have to manage till it comes back on... The children are not going to live.70

Rahul Mahajan relayed information from Falluja on his blog, Empire Notes, and later wrote about his experience in Counterpunch magazine. The Counterpunch piece appeared in November 2004—a time when the US was placing the city under another deadly siege.71 Recalling his experience in the clinic on April 10, 2004, Mahajan wrote: Snipers fired indiscriminately, usually at whatever moved. Of 20 people I saw come into the clinic I observed in a few hours, only five were “military-age males.” I saw old women, old men, a child of 10 shot through the head; terminal, the doctors told me, although in Baghdad they might have been able to save him. One thing that snipers were very discriminating about—every single ambulance I saw had bullet holes in it. Two I inspected bore clear evidence of specific, deliberate sniping.72

Back in Baghdad on April 18, 2004, Jamail and Mahajan attended a press conference with Khudair Abbas, then Iraq’s chief minister of health. The bloggers were the only Western journalists present. According to Mahajan: Abbas confirmed that U.S. forces shot at ambulances, not only in Fallujah and the approaches to Fallujah, but also in Sadr City. He agreed that the

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acts were criminal and said he has asked the IGC (Governing Council) and Bremer for an explanation. This is a sensational confirmation, but you won’t see it reported in any newspaper back home.73

While the veracity of Al Jazeera’s reportage was affirmed by bloggers and even the Iraqi Ministry of Health, the Pentagon insisted that such reportage was flawed. In fact, animosity towards Al Jazeera grew so great that Mansur believed US soldiers were eventually ordered to kill him and his team. According to Mansur: General Kimmitt came at night and said, “Ahmed Mansur spreads lies.” After that we were fired upon. I think they know exactly where their tanks were firing upon. It wasn’t something that is unknown or erratic. But it was direct, and because our lives has not ended yet, we stayed alive.

Having allegedly failed to kill Mansur, the Pentagon offered the residents of Falluja a ceasefire dependent on his exit. “We were told that the first condition to the ceasefire is Ahmed Mansur to exit the city,” Mansur said. After discussing the offer with his team in Falluja and editors in Qatar, he decided to depart. “If our leaving the city will bring about peace, then I will leave immediately,” he said.74 The Pentagon drew many lessons from the April 2004 siege. Citing the relatively few reporters “embedded in Marine units fighting in Fallujah,” the secret report found the “media presence on the battlefield was controlled by the enemy; consequently, they shaped much of the information the world viewed during the fight.” Western journalists, added the report, transmit “countervailing visual evidence presented by military authorities.” In their absence, the report concluded, “Al Jazeera shaped the world’s understanding of Fallujah.”75

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NPR’s Eric Niiler was among the small handful of Western journalists embedded with US marines attacking Falluja. His work provides a striking example of the type of friendly coverage the Pentagon finds so valuable. On April 5, 2004, NPR’s Michelle Norris introduced Niiler and the Falluja siege to listeners by noting: US Marines, along with Iraqi troops, have moved into the rebellious Iraqi town of Fallujah west of Baghdad. They have just begun a campaign against insurgents. The insurgents are blamed for the killing and mutilation of four American security contractors last week. Reporter Eric Niiler, from member station KPBS in San Diego, is travelling with the 5th Battalion of the 1st Marine Division. This evening, they entered the city, where a fire fight is now under way.

Once on the line, Norris asked Niiler what the scene in Falluja was like. He responded: Yes, we’ve got some gunfire here, and we’ve rolled through from the outskirts into the city. I’m with a unit that’s taken over a big food processing facility. I’m hearing reports of small-arms fire and not very far from my location. There’s also a large AC-135, which is called a Spectre gunship. And what that has done is it’s brought in a lot of airpower to the city. Boy, now the whole place is lighting up.

“What is the objective [of the assault]?” asked Norris. “To take control of the city and restore order,” responded Niiler. “That’s the message from the very top of this—the command here.” Norris then asked what the trip into Falluja was like. Before answering, Niiler interjected: There were four Marines with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force who were killed in a roadside bomb which exploded and two others seriously injured. And that was several hours ago in a separate incident, not too—maybe 10 miles from here.

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After sharing news about the dead soldiers, Niiler veered back to the question at hand: But all during the day, people were preparing. There have been mortar attacks. And people were just sort of going about, getting ready, doing the things they need, cause they knew that tonight was going to be a big night. And our first push has been into one of the objectives, and that’s gone very smooth so far.76

Niiler’s use of military jargon likely pleased Pentagon planners. Rather than discussing dead children and crowded clinics, Niiler described a battle where marines were simply “lighting up” “the whole place” during “big nights” and “smooth” “campaigns” to “restore order.” While valuable for Pentagon messaging, there were only a few embeds like Niiler present for the April assault—a mistake that the Pentagon soon rectified. For the November 2004 siege on Falluja, there were 91 embeds representing 60 media outlets. According to the Pentagon: “False allegations of noncombatant casualties were made by Arab media in both campaigns, but in the second case embedded Western reporters offered a rebuttal.” To his credit, NPR’s Niiler did attempt to account for Iraqi civilian casualties in his dispatch from Falluja on April 5, 2004. But his attempt reveals more about the structural problems of embedded reportage than about civilian casualties themselves: In terms of Iraqi casualties, I have no idea. I’m—admittedly, it’s a very one-sided perspective here because I’m travelling with the Marines. They’re the offensive force in town, and I cannot tell you anything about Iraqi casualties right now.77

4 Dead Bodies Don’t Count

George W. Bush’s pre-war message to Saddam Hussein was clear: dead Americans count, dead Iraqis do not. In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly during the run-up to the 2003 invasion, Bush warned: “If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will release or account for all Gulf War personnel whose fate is still unknown. It will return the remains of any who are deceased...”1 The demand stems from the Geneva Conventions—ratified by the US Congress on August 2, 1955—which hold signatories to account for all war dead. Article 15 of the first Geneva Convention requires states to “search for the dead and prevent their being despoiled”; Article 16 instructs all parties to “record as soon as possible, in respect of each wounded, sick or dead person of the adverse Party falling into their hands, any particulars which may assist in his identification”; and Article 17 holds states to “ensure that burial or cremation of the dead, carried out individually as far as circumstances permit, is preceded by a careful examination, if possible by a medical examination, of the bodies, with a view to confirming death, establishing identity and enabling a report to be made.”2 Despite these guarantees, the Pentagon and its defenders have sought to undermine efforts to count the dead in Iraq. Whenever casualty counts conducted by NGOs, media outlets, or epidemiologists surface, their 130

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methodology is denied, the credentials of the authors are attacked, and counter-reports are compiled. This is nothing new. Since Vietnam—the first major American conflict to ostensibly be covered by the Geneva Conventions—the US has expected its enemies to count the dead, but has consistently failed to do so itself.

Neither Time Nor Inclination The US military’s indifference to counting the numbers of Vietnamese civilians killed—as opposed to their tallying of other more mundane objects of war—was succinctly summed up by Chris Appy, author of Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered From All Sides: During the Vietnam War, the US military counted virtually everything. Most notoriously it made enemy “body counts” the central measure of American “progress.” But it also counted sorties flown, bombs dropped, tunnels destroyed, propaganda leaflets dispersed, and toothbrushes distributed. In the bowels of the National Archives you can even find out how many X-rays were taken at the U.S. Army’s 93rd Evacuation Hospital in 1967 (81,700). But nowhere in this surreal and grisly record of bookkeeping can you find one of the war’s most elemental statistics: civilians killed. Civilian casualties were routinely denied, ignored, or lumped together with those of enemy combatants; thus, the infamous GI saying, “If it’s Vietnamese and civilian, it’s Viet Cong.”3

Though ignored by the Pentagon, a simple solution to monitoring civilian harm was proposed early on during the war. As the New York Times’s Charles Mohr reported in 1966: The same paid intelligence agents in the countryside who call in air strikes also report to the Vietnamese and thus to the United States Air

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Force on the number of Vietnamese killed. Many such reports include mention of civilians killed, an American source said, but these are not passed to Saigon.4

According to US officials in Saigon in 1966, it was “impractical to gather statistics on civilian casualties.”5 US and South Vietnamese officials, added Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Neil Sheehan, had “neither the time nor the inclination” to make a full assessment of the human cost during this time.6 The dearth of figures on civilian dead inspired one US Senator to act. Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a vocal war critic, led the only robust US government effort to determine the numbers of civilian casualties in Vietnam.7 From 1967 to 1975, Kennedy’s senate subcommittee on refugees counted civilian casualties by combing through Vietnamese hospital records and interviewing physicians and other medical staff on the ground in South Vietnam. Kennedy estimated that as many as one out of every three injured civilians never reached medical facilities—a statistic he factored into his casualty totals. By 1972, Kennedy’s subcommittee estimated that there had been at least 1.1 million total civilian casualties since 1965 in South Vietnam—including over 325,000 deaths. While it did not reach an estimate for North Vietnam, his committee concluded that “contrary to official US views,” American bombing in the north left over 1 million refugees and did “massive damage throughout the country to medical facilities, schools, housing, churches, cultural centers.”8 Senator Kennedy’s casualty hearings on Capitol Hill often became heated. On September 28, 1972, Kennedy asked General John W. Pauly, deputy director for operations

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of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whether reports on “collateral damage” were collected and submitted to the “top level” in Washington. “No, sir, not as a specific report,” Pauly replied, adding: “Our policy has been established that only military targets will be struck, and that civilian casualties be minimized.” Kennedy fumed back: It is apparent from the record that at the highest levels of our government— where the decisions for the massive bombing and shelling of North Vietnam are made—there is no regular procedure for observing and monitoring the damage being done to civilian populated areas. Spokesmen for the Administration can talk with great precision about the number of bridges and roads and supply depots knocked out, but the damage done to schools and hospitals and housing and civilian installations generally is unavailable, even in executive session... [Pentagon officials] seem to operate on the assumption that because it is not our Government’s policy and intentions to hit civilian areas, we therefore don’t—except accidentally.9

Tabulating the dead would have been a useful way to pinpoint, then correct, methods that harmed civilians disproportionately. While the counting techniques used by Senator Kennedy may not yield exact figures, they do create a picture of the human costs, which are particularly relevant to military campaigns designed to win “hearts and minds.” Still, in the conflicts that were to come, the Pentagon continued to deflect responsibility and downplay the importance and feasibility of counting civilian casualties.

We May Never Know During the US invasion of Grenada, Pentagon officials stressed that troops were employing “surgical care” and “limited force”—two buzzwords still used today. But about

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a week after marines landed on the small Caribbean island, the Pentagon released a terse statement to address press reports of the deadly US bombing of a mental hospital. The dispatch stated that at least twelve patients were confirmed dead, and “four or five more” were expected to be recovered from the collapsed building by hospital staff. According to the Pentagon: “The marines did not know a hospital had been hit and, since they encountered no resistance from the hospital site, did not visit the site.” When asked why it had taken over a week to formally announce the strike—during which time the Pentagon denied all knowledge of civilian casualties—White House spokesman Larry Speakes was evasive, noting that the Grenada custom of “burying their dead early” might have been a factor. A Pentagon official improbably claimed that some of the mental patients might have been members of the People’s Revolutionary Army (PRA)—the Marxist militia that the US sought to depose. “There may be some PRA types buried up there,” said the official, “but I don’t think we’re going to dig up any bodies to make sure.”10 Obfuscation surrounding civilian casualty counts continued during the US invasion of Panama. The operation to oust Manuel Noriega in December 1989 was described by then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney as “surgical,” with 24,000 American troops being “very careful and very selective.” The Pentagon first refused to provide figures on civilian casualties in Panama and then gave conflicting estimates. Former US attorney general and leading American anti-war figure, Ramsey Clark, charged: There has been a failure to openly address the question. There is an obvious strong motive not to count bodies by governments. But attention must be

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paid. History demands to know, humanity demands to know, the future demands to know how many were killed.

Physicians for Human Rights, a Boston-based human rights organization, sent a team of doctors to document the invasion’s toll on civilians. The PHR investigation physically counted the dead and concluded that at least 302 Panamanian civilians had been killed, while at least 3000 more sought hospital care—numbers far higher than the initial Pentagon estimates of 202 and 1508, respectively. Further, PHR investigators found that the US had taken full responsibility for fewer than 3000 of the 18,000 persons displaced by the assault. A US Southern Command spokesperson dismissed their findings as “out of proportion.” A State Department official, commenting on the lack of US assistance to Panamanian refugees, added: “It’s not that we wouldn’t help these people. It’s that they didn’t ask us to.”11 The Pentagon again refused to count the dead during the first Gulf War. The White House and Pentagon made it very clear at the outset that no attempts would be made to quantify Iraqi civilian and military deaths. “I have absolutely no idea what the Iraqi casualties are,” said US Commander Norman Schwarzkopf during the first press conference held after the war’s start. “And I tell you, if I have anything to say about it, we’re never going to get into the body-count business. That’s, at best, nothing more than rough, wild estimates, and it’s ridiculous to do that.” According to a US Central Command spokesman in Riyadh: “We don’t count the bodies and we are not in the business of burying the dead.” Body disposal, he added, was the Saudis’ job.12

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The body count issue was difficult for the Pentagon to ignore after the bombing of the Amiriya air raid shelter, an attack—as we saw in Chapter 1—that killed more than 200 women and children. Although a Human Rights Watch investigation found no evidence that any senior Iraqi officials had been present at the site, which had been clearly marked as a civilian defense shelter, Dick Cheney nevertheless placed blame for the deaths squarely on Saddam Hussein. Hussein, he said, had “demonstrated repeatedly a willingness to use his population and cultural artifacts in an effort to shield and protect his military equipment.” The White House issued a bland statement following news of the attack: The loss of civilian lives in time of war is a truly tragic consequence. It saddens everyone to know that innocent people may have died in the course of military conflict. America treats human life as our most precious value. That is why even during this military conflict in which the lives of our servicemen and women are at risk, we will not target civilian facilities. We will continue to hit only military targets [emphasis added].13

Writing in the New York Times, John Cushman explained the calculus behind strict government silence on civilian body counts in Iraq: As the number of Iraqis killed becomes known it might inflame Arab public opinion in Jordan and the occupied territories of Israel, where Saddam Hussein has many supporters. The casualty figures could also fray the alliance’s solidarity by making the war unpopular in nations like Egypt and Syria, which have joined the coalition. At the same time, the mounting death toll may well horrify many in the United States who are opposed to the war on moral grounds.14

When Iraqi Religious Affairs Minister Abdullah Fadel estimated that the invasion had killed thousands of Iraqis by

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the war’s fifth week, George Bush railed against Baghdad’s “one-sided propaganda machine cranking out a lot of myths and falsehoods.” Cheney added: “We have no way of knowing precisely how many casualties occurred... We may never know.”15 Pentagon silence was so absolute on Iraqi civilian deaths during the first Gulf War that a scandal ensued when one government researcher released her best estimates of the human costs. In late 1991, then 29-year-old Beth Osborne Daponte was working at the Census Bureau’s International Research Division, an office charged with estimating the populations of other countries. At the time, she was tasked to update the population of Iraq, a job that required her to determine how many Iraqis had died as a result of the war and its aftermath. Following standard Census Bureau formulas, she estimated the difference between the numbers of projected deaths among various Iraqi demographic groups prior to the war and the actual post-war mortality rates. Using this methodology, Daponte determined that 13,000 civilians were killed directly by US and coalition forces, and about 70,000 more died in the aftermath from poor health conditions caused by the deliberate destruction of Iraqi infrastructure.16 In early 1992, she shared the casualty data with Robert Burns, then a reporter with the Associated Press. “My salary had been paid by tax dollars,” she explained. “I thought the public was entitled to know what we had come up with.” Daponte was promptly fired when her figures were publicly released. Barbara Boyle Torrey, then her boss at the Census Bureau, wrote in her dismissal notice that her findings exhibited “unreliability.” Her use of “false information,” she added, constituted “a major violation

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of trust, for which removal is the only effective sanction.” Daponte’s supervisors then rewrote her casualty findings, slashing the number of wartime civilian deaths from 13,000 to 5000 and removing from her final report a chart breaking down the figures for men, women and children. When the media later reported on her dismissal, a Census Bureau spokesperson denied that Daponte was fired due to the content of her report. Rather, the Bureau claimed, action was taken because the information had been “released prematurely.” Joseph Sellers, of the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, told the Washington Post at the time that her dismissal “smacks of either retaliation or a whistleblower type of phenomenon, where a person discloses something an agency would prefer not to be aired publicly.” Upon learning about her case, the American Civil Liberties Union and a local law firm rallied to her defense while the American Statistical Association spoke out on behalf of her methodology. The Census Bureau then reinstated her job, but, disillusioned, Daponte departed shortly thereafter for an academic position at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg. “I think it’s rather scary that if an employee releases public information to the public, they can get fired for it,” Daponte later said. Today, her figures for the first Gulf War fall within the middle range of estimates of Iraqi civilian dead.17 Daponte’s experience gained renewed attention a decade later amid Pentagon refusals to count the dead in Afghanistan. “You know we don’t do body counts,” said top US general Tommy Franks in March 2002.18 While the Pentagon remains mum on civilian death figures in Afghanistan, various journalists and NGOs put the Afghan civilian toll in the range of several thousand to over 20,000,

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accounting for the war’s secondary effects on public health.19 In a 2003 interview with the Boston Globe, Daponte stressed the importance of accounting for civilian casualties. “The idea of deaths in the drumbeat toward war just isn’t there,” she said, referring to the impending strike on Iraq. “It isn’t part of the discourse on either side. It’s as if the less that it’s talked about, the assumption is zero deaths.” But even Daponte could not predict the controversy that would unfold surrounding civilian death counts in the ensuing war.

Conflicting Counts During the first stages of the war in Iraq, the Pentagon maintained a policy of “casualty agnosticism”—framing the issue as if the numbers were completely unknowable. In late 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld echoed Franks’s remarks on body counts, noting: “We don’t do body counts on other people.” According to US military spokesman Colonel Guy Shields, there is “no accurate way” to tally civilian deaths. “In terms of statistics we have no definite estimates of civilian casualties for the whole campaign. It would be irresponsible to give firm estimates given the wide range of variables,” he said in September 2003.20 Contrary to these statements, the Pentagon was, in fact, counting the dead in Iraq. In late 2006—amid fallout from a damaging report on civilian casualties in the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet—the Pentagon declassified the first of several charts tracking civilian casualties. Months later, in an effort to bolster the successful image of the 2007 troop surge, the Pentagon released statistics on civilian deaths. In both cases, the Pentagon released limited data, and only when it was politically convenient to do so.

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In the absence of official figures during the early stages of the war, a variety of organizations and research initiatives sprang up to account for Iraqi civilian casualties. Iraq Body Count (IBC), the first organization to track Iraqi civilian deaths, estimated that from March 20 through May 1, 2003, 7088 civilians were killed. Of these, 6882 deaths were caused directly by US-led forces, while the remainder were killed by insurgents, criminal elements, and unknown factors. By the end of 2003, the IBC total for civilians killed that year stood at 12,049. By the end of 2004 the number reached 22,800 deaths, by 2005 it hit 37,649, by 2006 it jumped to 65,344, by the end of 2007 the total was 89,878 civilians killed, by the end of 2008 it was 99,103 and reached 103,411 deaths at the close of 2009.21 IBC figures are derived mostly from English-language press reports of civilian deaths in Iraq. The count, according to the website, includes civilian deaths caused by coalition military action and by military or paramilitary responses to the coalition presence (e.g. insurgent and terrorist attacks). It also includes excess civilian deaths caused by criminal action resulting from the breakdown in law and order which followed the coalition invasion.

Critics across the political spectrum found this counting method contentious. “IBC’s methodology is designed to come to as large a total as possible,” railed conservative commentator Stephen Pollard in The Times (London). “The organisation simply adds up all reports of casualties, no matter what the source or how scant the evidence,” he continued. At the time, the IBC only logged Iraqi deaths reported by two or more media outlets. In Pollard’s view, Iraq Body Count was not reliable because it drew data from mainstream sources like the BBC, which Pollard believed

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had a left-wing bias. “BBC itself reports its propaganda as fact,” he stated, thereby implying that IBC counts constituted “propaganda” as well.22 Many on the left have also faulted IBC’s methodology. Leading the charge were the editors of Media Lens, the UK-based media watchdog. “In reality, IBC is not primarily an Iraq Body Count, it is not even an Iraq Media Body Count, it is an Iraq Western Media Body Count,” they wrote on their website.23 Independent journalist Dahr Jamail noted that IBC is “most certainly under-reporting Iraqi civilian deaths caused by coalition aircraft.” In an email to Media Lens, Jamail wrote: Due to their sources and lack of adequate Arab media in them (who do a much better job of reporting Iraqi civilian casualty counts), it is heavily biased towards western outlets which have from the beginning done a dismal (at best) job of reporting on the air war and consequent civ. casualties.24

Stephen Soldz of Psyche, Science and Society highlighted similar faults. Referring to the fact that the Associated Press, Agence France-Press and Reuters together provided about a third of all IBC data up to 2005, Soldz wrote: Do these few agencies really have enough Iraqi reporters on retainer to cover the country? Are these reporters really able comprehensively to cover deaths in insurgent-held parts of Iraq? How likely is it that two reporters from distinct media outlets are going to be present at a given site where deaths occur? How many of the thousands of US bombings have been investigated by any reporter, Western or Iraqi? Simply to state these questions is to emphasize the fragmentary nature of the reporting that occurs and thus the limitations of the IBC database.25

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In defense of their methods, a message on the IBC website concedes that “our own total is certain to be an underestimate of the true position, because of gaps in reporting or recording.” Further, the site now includes single-sourced incidents in its database and lists over a hundred sources of English-language news, including dozens of English-language Middle East-based sources including Al Jazeera, Arab Times, and Al Iraq. According to the site: The project relies on the professional rigour of the approved reporting agencies. It is assumed that any agency that has attained a respected international status operates its own rigorous checks before publishing items (including, where possible, eye-witness and confidential sources).26

Even with the potential limitations of English-only sources, IBC’s data for the period of the invasion (7088 deaths between March and May 2003) is nearly double other estimates put forth. For example, an effort sponsored by Washington DC-based Campaign for Innocent Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC) which surveyed various hospitals throughout Iraq found 1995 deaths and 4959 injuries during this same period. According to Raed Jarrar, director of the survey, a civilian was “anyone killed outside the battlefield, even if his original job was military (e.g. a soldier killed in his house is a civilian)” while military was “anyone killed while fighting in a battle, even if his original job was a civic one (e.g. an engineer killed while fighting as a Fidaee).” An Associated Press survey, published on June 10, 2003, was based on records from 60 of Iraq’s 124 hospitals for the period between March 20 and April 20, 2003. The survey found that at least 3240 civilians died during this period, but the report’s author, Niko Price, noted: “The count is still fragmentary, and the complete toll—if it is ever tallied—is

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sure to be significantly higher.” He explained: “The AP excluded all counts done by hospitals whose written records did not distinguish between civilian and military dead, which means hundreds, possibly thousands, of victims in Iraq’s largest cities and most intense battles aren’t reflected in the total.” The Commonwealth Institute’s Project on Defense Alternatives came out with its own estimate. The PDA study drew on various sources, including journalistic accounts, surveys of hospitals, burial sites, graveyards, and military reports from both sides of the conflict. The authors estimated that between 10,800 and 15,100 Iraqis were killed during the course of the war from March to May 2003. Like the AP report, the PDA found that only 3200 to 4300 of these deaths were non-combatants—those not believed to be Iraqi troops or members of the Baath party and other militias.27 Conservative commentators seized on the above estimates as evidence of a bloodless war. For example, in an article headlined “Casualties of War Kept at a Minimum,” Neil Graves of the New York Post noted the “body count was kept low because the United States was able to wrap up the major parts of the conflict in just 43 days.” Graves cited PDA statistics and the views of a Pentagon official whom Graves said “credited the relatively low loss of innocent lives to our professional military.” According to this official, “Civilian casualties appear to have been much lower than any conflict in modern history, a testament to the professionalism, courage, discipline and compassion of our military.”28 The ostensibly “low” count by the PDA reflects less the military’s “compassion” than the core difficulties that non-military officials have in tracking civilian casualties during conflicts. The Pentagon has the technology, budget,

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and human resources to better assess battle damage than news agencies, think tanks, and non-profit organizations. Body counts that relied on mortuary and hospital records— such as the PDA, AP and CIVIC surveys—were limited, as many dead and injured never reach hospitals, clinics or morgues. Moreover, record-keeping accuracy at these facilities can lapse during spikes of violence and disorder, given that handwritten documents are easily damaged, destroyed, or misplaced. On average, researchers have found that accounting methods reliant on written records record fewer than 20 percent of actual deaths during conflicts. Compounding this problem, the pressures of war can have compromising effects on the quality of media reportage. A 1999 study of political deaths in Guatemala between 1960 and 1990 found that, in years of low violence, the press correctly reported over 50 percent of deaths, but when violence was high, newspapers reported on fewer than five percent of total deaths.29 Media-reliant IBC numbers are equally vulnerable to spikes of violence and insecurity. Finally, counts by IBC, PDA, AP and CIVIC do not account for post-conflict death. Vietnamese children still die today from US landmines and from the effects of the toxic defoliant Agent Orange, while Iraqi civilians still suffer from effects of depleted uranium weapons used in 1991—and again in 2003.30 These post-conflict deaths are the hardest to track, as they can occur under various guises decades after the war itself subsides. Epidemiologists, researchers who study the frequency and distribution of disease and death within human populations, are acutely aware of the limitations outlined above. To compensate for them, the field has advanced novel methods of estimating casualties—methods which sample,

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survey, and then extrapolate figures for the wider population based on the deaths and injuries within individual families. Epidemiological surveys have led to the most reliable counts of Iraqi dead—but also, paradoxically, the most contentious.

The Six-Figure Fight In 2000, veteran epidemiologist Les Roberts, then at Johns Hopkins University, was hired by the International Rescue Committee to determine the number of total deaths stemming from the civil war in the Congo. To do so, Roberts and a team of Congolese researchers fanned out across eastern Congo and interviewed the members of 1011 households. Researchers asked if anyone in the family had died since 1998, and if so, how. The results from the region covered by Roberts’s team were then extrapolated to the outlying regions across the Congo. Using this method, Roberts found that 1.7 million “excess deaths” had occurred in the Congo since 1998 due to civil war. “Excess deaths” included all those killed from direct violence—approximately 200,000 in all—plus over a million deaths from malaria, diarrhea and respiratory infections that would have been treatable had the war not occurred. Roberts found that the Congo’s most violent areas yielded the highest numbers of deaths. “Violent deaths and ‘non-violent’ deaths are inseparable,” noted the report. He concluded: In areas surveyed, the higher the number of victims of violent deaths, the higher the number of victims from infectious disease and malnutrition. Access to any kind of health service is severely limited in areas where there is a high level of violence or for populations forced to flee unrest.31

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Roberts’s data was well received by US government officials and mainstream media. Colin Powell quoted the figure without attribution, Roberts testified about his results in Congress, and soon thereafter the State Department announced a pledge of an additional $10 million in aid to the Congo.32 CNN not only reported Roberts’s findings, but created a special in-depth website titled “Counting the Dead in Congo,” featuring seven videos, interview transcripts and a 4200-word essay by Roberts.33 The New York Times cited Roberts’s estimate without attribution and featured a statement by Roberts as the paper’s coveted “Quote of the Day.” Even the neoconservative Washington Times reported Roberts’s estimates as fact. An interview published in the paper asked friendly questions like: “How does this disaster compare in scope and scale to other African crises?” and “What can be done?”34 Four years later, Roberts set his sights on Iraq. In early September 2004, Roberts and his team snuck into the country from Jordan in the back of an SUV. Despite the dangers, they fanned out across Iraq to interview families. Researchers spoke to nearly 1000 households across 33 randomly selected neighborhoods in Iraq—roughly 8000 people in all. Respondents were asked questions relating to the household composition before and after the war. By late September 2004, his task in Iraq was complete. The results were shocking: over 100,000 “excess” Iraqi deaths.35 Roberts’s report was published in the Lancet five days before the 2004 US presidential elections. The report, which had been “fast-tracked” by Lancet editors to make the deadline, found that the major causes of death prior to the war were heart attack, stroke, and other chronic disorders. But after the invasion, the main cause of death in

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Iraq was violence directly related to the actions of Coalition military forces. The Lancet report found that the risk of death from violence was 58 times higher than it had been before the war. In fact, about 95 percent of violent deaths were attributable to air strikes or machine-gun fire from helicopters. More than half the people who died a violent death were women and children. Data from Falluja was so troubling that it skewed the report and had to be excluded. The city of Falluja had a particularly high rate of violent deaths—53 deaths out of the city’s 30 surveyed households. In the other 32 neighborhoods from which the researchers collected their data, only 89 deaths were counted. Excluding Falluja, the study concluded—using standard epidemiological phraseology—there was a 95 percent chance that the numbers were in the middle of a range between 8000 and 194,000 total deaths. “Making conservative assumptions,” the report said, “we think that about 100,000 excess deaths or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from Coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths.”36 Though Roberts had used identical methodology in his Congo report, the response to the Iraq survey was markedly different. According to an editorial in the once sympathetic Washington Times: “The method for this study—looking at population figures and surveying a few thousand Iraqis to ask how many deaths they’d heard of—abstracted the question and avoided the hard work of actually documenting the deaths.” The editorial added that the timing of the report’s publication in the Lancet, five days before the 2004 election, represented the “egregious politicization of what is supposed to be an objective and scientific journal.”37

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Marc Garlasco, former chief of Pentagon targeting in Iraq and now with Human Rights Watch, told the Washington Post that the “numbers seem to be inflated”—comments repeated and amplified elsewhere. (Garlasco later retracted his statement, noting that he had not read the Lancet report prior to commenting on it.) While the New York Times initially withheld criticism, a later story quoted the Brookings Institute’s Michael O’Hanlon, who claimed that Iraq Body Count data reflected “more serious work than the Lancet report.” Even researchers from IBC joined in the fray. An IBC press release stressed that “each entry in the Iraq Body Count database represents deaths which have actually been recorded by appropriate witnesses— not ‘possible’ or even ‘probable’ deaths.” The press release added: “Iraq Body Count only includes reports where there are feasible methods of distinguishing military from civilian deaths... Our count is purely a civilian count.”38 The IBC critique did target one core weakness of the Lancet study: failure to distinguish between civilians and combatants. There was some obvious confusion about this—even by Lancet staff. When the article premiered, the Lancet’s homepage announced: “100,000 excess civilian deaths after Iraq invasion.” Dozens of newspapers followed suit. The New York Times, for example, declared in a headline: “Study Puts Iraqi Deaths of Civilians at 100,000.” The first sentence of the article repeated this claim, noting, “An estimated 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq as a direct or indirect consequence of the March 2003 United States-led invasion...”39 These claims were incorrect. Les Roberts and co-authors state that, given that 46 percent of those recorded killed were military-aged males between 15 and 60 years old, “many of the Iraqis reportedly killed by

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US forces could have been combatants.” While understandable, given the fluidity of the situation in Iraq, the fact that Roberts’s team did not distinguish between civilians and combatants proved to be one valid criticism of an otherwise well-formulated report. Other critiques were misguided. For instance, many commentators dismissed the report due to the statement— standard among epidemiological surveys—that the authors were 95 percent sure that their finding lay in the middle of 8000 and 194,000 deaths. “Eight thousand and 194,000? What’s a reporter to make of such a broad range? The lower end of that range overlaps well with previous, nonscientific estimates, but the middle and upper range seem outrageous,” noted Lila Guterman in the Columbia Journalism Review. Many journalists were clearly confused. In Slate, for instance, Fred Kaplan criticized the “absurdly vast range” of the report’s findings. “This isn’t an estimate,” he scoffed. “It’s a dart board.” But in her story for the Columbia Journalism Review, Guterman queried ten biostatisticians and mortality experts about the large range. According to Guterman: Not one of them took issue with the study’s methods or its conclusions. If anything, the scientists told me, the authors had been cautious in their estimates. With a quick call to a statistician, reporters would have found that the probability forms a bell curve—the likelihood is very small that the number of deaths fell at either extreme of the range. It was very likely to fall near the middle.40

Unlike in the US, the Lancet report received good exposure and praise in the British press. In turn, Downing Street was forced to comment on its findings. According to Tony Blair’s spokesperson: “The findings were based

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on extrapolation and treating Iraq as if it were all the same in terms of the level of the conflict. This is not the case.” Another UK defense official told the Guardian: “We would be guessing if we tried to give a total number of casualties. The government thinks there is no reliable figure.” Professor Klim McPherson, visiting professor of public health epidemiology at Oxford University, countered in a British Medical Journal op-ed: The methods for counting the dead in such circumstances are well established and cannot rely on incidental reports or assessments in hospital mortuaries alone. They require first hand verbal autopsies, that should be reliably obtained so that extrapolation to the population is possible, as Roberts et al had done... The UK government, acting on our behalf, ought to offer reasoned criticism of the existing estimates. It should pursue their public health responsibilities to count the casualties by using modern methods. Democracy requires this, as does proper responsibility under the Geneva Conventions.

McPherson’s views were supported in an open letter to the British Medical Journal by an international group of 24 health experts from countries including the UK, US, Australia, Canada, Spain and Italy. They called on the American and British governments to conduct an independent inquiry into Iraqi civilian casualties. “The obvious answer to removing uncertainties that remain is to commission a larger study with full official support and assistance, but scientific independence,” read the statement.41 These calls have not been heeded.

The Lesser of Two Evils? An interesting by-product of the Lancet casualty debate in late 2004 and early 2005 was a new favoritism for Iraq Body

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Count data among government officials and conservative pundits. For instance, in response to the Lancet survey, UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told the Guardian that the 100,000 death figure was “very high, and that the website Iraq Body Count, relying on Western press reports, had put the death toll at 16,000.” In the US, columnist John Leo altered his own views about the IBC. In a 2003 opinion piece headlined “Misleading Public on Civilian Deaths,” Leo had dismissed the “questionable and ideological” methods of IBC analysts. But Leo grew sympathetic to the lower IBC numbers following publication of the Lancet report. In an August 2005 piece, Leo cited the views of Lancet critic Michael O’Hanlon, who said (as cited above) that IBC data reflected “more serious work.” As Media Lens later observed: Any number of politicians and journalists, particularly of the pro-war variety, have leapt on IBC’s figures precisely to downplay the tragedy of the civilian death toll. They are using the lowest number they can find to suggest, for example, that the results of the invasion have been far less severe than the consequences of leaving Saddam Hussein in power.

Sarah Sewall, director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, also found this to be true. “I remember very well a couple of different conferences with military officials where everyone was questioning the method and the motive of the IBC’s approach,” she told National Public Radio. “And it wasn’t until the first Lancet survey came out everyone said, ‘Oh, well, goodness, the Iraq Body Count is so much more reliable.’”42 IBC figures have since been cited by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction and even referenced by George W. Bush. At a press conference in

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Philadelphia on December 12, 2005, a reporter asked Bush pointedly: “Since the inception of the Iraqi war, I’d like to know the approximate total of Iraqis who have been killed. And by Iraqis I include civilians, military, police, insurgents, translators.” Bush responded: How many Iraqi citizens have died in this war? I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis. We’ve lost about 2,140 of our own troops in Iraq.

The brief exchange made headlines in the US and prompted a clarification from the White House press office. White House spokesman Scott McClellan reminded reporters that “no official government estimate” existed of Iraqi dead and that Bush “was citing public estimates.” At the time, IBC estimated the number of Iraqi civilian deaths at between 27,383 and 30,892.43

Still Counting While controversy over the Lancet report drew attention away from its important findings, it did help push the issue of Iraqi civilian casualties into the public eye. Following the report’s release, a number of other inquiries were made into Iraqi civilian deaths. The United Nations Development Program estimated that, between March 2003 and April 2004, 24,000 “war related” deaths had occurred; the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq put the figure for January through December 2006 at 34,452 civilian dead; the Iraqi Ministry of Health estimated that 150,000 civilians had been killed between March 2003 and November 2006; and the World Health Organization estimated 151,000 violent Iraqi deaths between March 2003 and June 2006.44

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However, all of these figures paled in comparison to the numbers proposed by a follow-up Lancet study and later estimates by the respected British polling company Opinion Research Business (ORB). In the second of their major studies into excess deaths in Iraq since 2003, Johns Hopkins researchers (this time led by Gilbert Burnham, co-director of the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response at Johns Hopkins) came to the following conclusion: We estimate that between March 18, 2003, and June, 2006, an additional 654,965 (392,979–942,636) Iraqis have died above what would have been expected on the basis of the pre-invasion crude mortality rate as a consequence of the coalition invasion. Of these deaths, we estimate that 601,027 (426,369–793,663) were due to violence.

For this later study, the Johns Hopkins team gathered data from 47 randomly selected neighborhoods, each containing 40 households—a total of 12,801 people in all. By comparing pre- and post-invasion mortality rates, the team found that roughly 2.5 percent of the Iraqi population had died following the invasion. “The proportion of deaths ascribed to coalition forces has diminished in 2006 [from 39 per cent to 26 per cent], although the actual numbers have increased every year,” noted the report, reflecting the rise in sectarian strife. “Gunfire remains the most common cause of death, although deaths from car bombing have increased.”45 The second Lancet survey received broad attention in newspapers across the globe. A cursory search in the LexisNexis database revealed over 700 references to the new report in October and November 2006 alone by English language newspapers and magazines. The study “represents a statistically valid attempt to calculate the dreadful things

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that have happened, and continue to happen,” declared the Economist—perhaps the report’s most prestigious backer. While some were sympathetic to the new findings, most newspapers framed the study as “controversial.” Vitriolic criticism came from the usual suspects. On October 12, 2006, the Washington Times dedicated an entire editorial—the first of several—to the new Lancet findings. The paper seethed: Credit the newsmaking scientists at Johns Hopkins with this: They know a political opportunity when they see one. This latest Iraq war-death estimate—655,000, four times higher than anyone else’s—is released a few weeks before Election 2006, just like their last Lancet study, which appeared right before the 2004 election. Here we are again, watching science meet anti-war politics.46

More criticism of the 2006 Lancet study was to be found in a National Journal cover story titled “Data Bomb,” by Neil Munro and Carl M. Cannon. The article attacked the study for its supposed political bias, citing a grant of $46,000 that the project received from George Soros’s Open Society Institute. Munro and Cannon noted that Soros ran against George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election, and had been critical of the Iraq war. Yet, as Media Lens pointed out, the grant was received well after the study had been commissioned and had no direct bearing on the research design or its eventual outcome. Media Lens further debunked the National Journal piece, finding that Munro and Cannon “used speculation, innuendo and numerous references to mostly unnamed ‘critics’” to undermine the Lancet study.47 The study also garnered harsh comments from the upper echelons of the Iraqi, US, and UK governments. Ali Dabbagh, an Iraqi government spokesman, said at

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the time that the new Lancet report “gives exaggerated figures that contradict the simplest rules of accuracy and investigation.” A spokesperson for Tony Blair said the study had “extrapolated from an unrepresentative sample of the population,” while UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett noted that the numbers were “a substantial leap from other figures.” George W. Bush personally attacked the new survey, stating in a White House press conference: I don’t consider it a credible report. Neither does General Casey and neither do Iraqi officials. I do know that a lot of innocent people have died, and that troubles me and it grieves me... No question, it’s violent, but this report is one—they put it out before, it was pretty well—the methodology was pretty well discredited... A lot of innocent people have lost their life—600,000, or whatever they guessed at, is just—it’s not credible.48

As they did in 2004, the Johns Hopkins team followed standard rules of epidemiological investigation— methodology supported by the US government in other contexts. For example, identical survey methods were employed when US government officials sought to estimate how many civilians died during the Kosovo war. Furthermore, under George W. Bush, the US government funded the SMART Initiative—a course designed to teach NGO officials how to plan and execute similar cluster-based mortality surveys.49 In early 2007, the BBC uncovered internal UK documents showing that senior staff to Tony Blair actually held the second Lancet report in high regard. “The survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones,” noted one official, whose name is blacked out. In another memo,

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the UK Ministry of Defense Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Roy Anderson noted that the Lancet methodology is “robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to ‘best practice’ in this area, given the difficulties of data collection and verification in the present circumstances in Iraq.” These views were seconded by public health professionals across the globe. In Australia, for instance, 27 leading health science academics penned an open letter of support to the Age (Melbourne). They argued that: Conducting such a rigorous study within the constraints of the security situation in Iraq is dangerous and difficult, and deserves commendation. We have not heard any legitimate reason to dismiss its findings. It is noteworthy that the same methodology has been used in recent mortality surveys in Darfur and Democratic Republic of Congo, but there has been no criticism of these surveys... We urge open and constructive debate, rather than ill-informed criticism of the methods or results of sound science.50

The second Lancet report also gained traction among anti-war politicians in the US. On December 11, 2006, Republican Representative Ron Paul of Texas and Ohio Democrat Dennis Kucinich held hearings on Capitol Hill into the Lancet’s conclusions. The hearings featured Gilbert Burnham, Les Roberts, and Iraq commentator Juan Cole. Burnham and Roberts defended and explained their methodology, while Cole endorsed the Lancet figures and contextualized the violence in Iraq. In many ways, the hearings marked a high point of dissent on Pentagon civilian casualty policy. In his opening remarks, Kucinich posed a number of questions aimed directly at the Bush Administration:

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What confidence do we have in the US administration responses on the number of Iraqi fatalities? Who is getting killed by whom, and why? What does this violence do to the prospects of peace in Iraq? What are the short-term and long-term implications of this massive number of deaths to Iraqi civil society? Will the millions of Iraqi children who have lost a parent ever forgive our country for igniting this violence? How do we make peace with the generations of Iraqis severely harmed by this unnecessary war of choice?51

Some of these vital questions were addressed, albeit indirectly, by a Pentagon declassification only days later. On Monday December 18, 2006—only five days after the Lancet hearing in Washington and the same day that Donald Rumsfeld stepped down as defense secretary—the Pentagon declassified its first batch of data on Iraqi civilian casualties.52 After decades of “casualty agnosticism,” the Pentagon released the figures, apparently to undercut criticism generated by the second Lancet report.

Opening the Vault The Pentagon’s civilian casualty data was released in a quarterly report called “Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq” (MSSI). The Defense Department had been producing these reports since July 2005 (as required by an act of Congress passed that year), but the November 2006 edition, declassified in December 2006, was the first to carry a graph documenting civilian casualties. Two prior reports merely lumped Iraqi military, police and civilians into one general category—never before had civilians been given their own statistical column. Now distinct from other categories, the columns revealed that rates of civilian casualties tripled

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from April 1, 2004 through November 10, 2006. “This increase in civilian casualties,” noted the report, “was almost entirely the result of murders and executions.” During the 31-month period reflected by the graph, roughly 44,000 civilian casualties (deaths and injuries) occurred.53 Inclusion of this data in the November MSSI revealed two important things. First, it showed that the Pentagon had secretly been counting Iraqi civilian deaths and injuries from at least April 1, 2004—the earliest date listed on the graph. Secondly, the report’s comment about “murders and executions” revealed that the Pentagon recorded specific details on individual deaths. Both facts run counter to previous Pentagon claims about body counts. Still, the casualty figure represented on the Pentagon chart—roughly 44,000 injuries and deaths—is improbably low. According to Iraq Body Count, there are three injuries for every death in Iraq. If one divides the Pentagon death and injury count by a factor of four to discern only the number of civilians killed, one gets a figure of 11,000 deaths. This figure pales in comparison to Lancet estimates and to the corresponding Iraq Body Count figure of 45,163 deaths between April 1, 2004 and November 1, 2006. A qualification underneath the MSSI chart explained the disparity. According to the fine print, the Pentagon casualty figures were “derived from unverified initial reports submitted by Coalition elements responding to an incident; the inconclusivity of these numbers constrains them to be used only for comparative purposes.” These unverified reports are drawn from the Pentagon’s SIGACT database—a body of data highly limited in scope. As noted by the Washington Post, SIGACT reporting is “invariably incomplete” as “minor incidents such as executions and random killings are usually

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not investigated by Coalition units.”54 Despite the limited nature of SIGACT data, MSSI reports issued in March, June and September 2007 utilized this information. Viewed together, the total civilian casualty count provided by the Pentagon from April 1, 2004 to August 30, 2007 was roughly 72,000—a figure greatly at odds with Lancet and IBC data. The September 2007 MSSI marked the final Pentagon report to include civilian casualty rates lumping deaths and injuries together as a single figure. All subsequent MSSIs have included civilian death rates distinct from injury, incorporating data first released publicly by General David Petraeus during Congressional hearings on the 2007 troop surge—the controversial deployment of an additional 20,000 US troops to Iraq. On September 10 and 11, 2007, Petraeus reported to Congress on the surge’s impact on security in Iraq. A majority of Americans polled in 2007 had been against sending more troops to Iraq, and many leading Democrats had harshly criticized the initiative. Eager to highlight any positive developments, Petraeus cited a variety of “positive indicators,” including a chart citing declining rates of civilian deaths. According to a chart labeled “Iraq Civilian Deaths,” roughly 38,000 civilians died between January 2006 and August 2007. Although grim, Petraeus stressed that a downward trend in total civilian death rates began in January 2007—the month the surge began. The data release surprised many. “The American military appears to have definitively abandoned the ‘Tommy Franks doctrine’ of civilian casualty statistics,” noted the Washington Post’s Michael Dobbs. It was a doctrine abandoned, Dobbs might have added, only when it was politically expedient to do so. The chief military statistician in Baghdad, Colonel David R.

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LaRivee, later cautioned that he would not “want anybody to read too much into the precision” of the death data presented by Petraeus to Congress, but stressed that “the trends are moving in the right direction.”55 To muddy the waters even further, a UK-based polling company, Opinion Research Business, in September 2007 released a death estimate of their own. According to an ORB press release: In the week in which General Petraeus reports back to US Congress on the impact the recent ‘surge’ is having in Iraq, a new poll reveals that more than 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have been murdered since the invasion took place in 2003.56

Using a cluster-based methodology similar to that of the Johns Hopkins team, ORB asked 1,499 randomly-selected adults across Iraq how many members of their household had died as a result of violence since 2003, and if so, how. Seventy-eight of the respondents said zero, 16 percent reported that one family member had died, 5 percent reported that two had died, 1 percent reported three, and .002 percent reported four or more deaths in their household. “Given that from the 2005 census there are a total of 4,050,597 households,” noted ORB, “this data suggests a total of 1,220,580 deaths since the invasion in 2003.” Nearly 50 percent of the deaths, ORB added, were caused from gunshot wounds. Unlike the Lancet revelations, the ORB data barely made a blip in mainstream news cycles. Apart from being highlighted in a press release by Dennis Kucinich, mentioned briefly in a McClatchy wire story, and derided in a Cleveland Plain Dealer editorial, little was reported in the US about ORB’s dramatic findings. Les Roberts of the Lancet report

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later commented on the lack of attention garnered by the ORB survey and the flak he had received for his own work: When you look at the attacks that have been made on ORB and the attacks that have been made on us as a result of putting this information out, suddenly you realize why CNN and The Washington Post don’t want to be the entity saying that more than twice as many people have died in Iraq as have died in Darfur. That’s just not going to win you many friends.57

By 2009, at least 13 different Iraqi death counts were conducted by a variety of researchers using varying methodologies.58 ORB, for instance, conducted a follow-up survey in 2008 including an additional 600 households in rural Iraqi communities. The wider sample yielded a slightly revised death count: 1,033,000 deaths for the period between March 2003 and August 2007. The latest Pentagon MSSI provides a much lower count: roughly 57,500 deaths between January 2006 and May 2009, according to combined US and Iraqi government reports.59 Sifting through the various counts—and perhaps even just reading about them—can prove frustrating. As empirical abstractions, fought over for purposes of legitimation, body counts reveal more about the abuse of power than they do about human suffering. But behind every comma, zero, every “1,” “10” and “100,” is a human life as real as yourself, your best friend, mother or father. Whether crushed under the debris of a US “smart” bomb, caught in crossfire between rival militias, or silently expiring in an overcrowded clinic, these Iraqi deaths are real—they should count.

5 Iraqi Sociocide

“They come from above, from the air, and will kill us and destroy us. I can explain to you that we fear this every day and every night,” said Shelma, then only five years old, on the eve of the US invasion in 2003. Assem, then also five, added fearfully, “They have guns and bombs and the air will be cold and hot and we will burn very much.” 1 Now, over seven years later—as US troops slowly withdraw from their country—what does the future hold for Assem and Shelma? What has the US left behind in Iraq? Our interviews with Iraqis, along with the reportage of human rights organizations, bloggers and enterprising journalists, foretell an uncertain road ahead. Iraq’s women and children—always the most vulnerable in times of unrest— remain at risk, while Iraqi homosexuals and the country’s ethnic and religious minorities continue to face violent death in the new Iraq. Furthermore, the decimated remains of Iraq’s rich cultural heritage—once safeguarded in museums, libraries and secure archeological sites—continue to be sold off abroad to the highest bidder. While the worst of the post-invasion violence seems to have subsided, a legacy of sociocide—the total assault upon Iraqi lives, culture and national identity—remains. 162

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Childhood Lost The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, signed by both Iraq and the US, affirms that “every child has the inherent right to life” and holds state parties to “ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the child.”2 These guarantees are not met in Iraq. As discussed in Chapter 1, UNICEF found that between 1990 and 1998 up to 500,000 Iraqis under the age of five had died due to war, sanctions and the bankrupt Iraqi health care system. The 2003 invasion further worsened conditions for Iraqi children. In June 2003—only three months after the initial “shock and awe” campaign—the International Rescue Committee found that: Malnutrition and disease, such as diarrhea caused by contaminated water supplies, are common problems. Children are maimed and injured daily by unexploded munitions and the collapse of the previous administration has led to increased social and economic pressure on families and children.3

As violence ebbed more than four years later, UNICEF found that up to 2 million Iraqi children faced malnutrition, disease and interrupted education. By December 2007, over 760,000 children were out of primary school, while only 28 percent of all 17-year-olds in Iraq took their final exams in the summer of that year. Of these, only 40 percent received a passing grade. UNICEF also found that an average of 25,000 children per month were displaced by violence or intimidation during the peak of sectarian strife following the February 2006 bombings in Samarra, while thousands had been killed, injured or kidnapped. Health conditions throughout Iraq were dismal: 20 percent of children living outside of Baghdad had no access to clean water or working

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sewerage, and almost none had access to government health services. “Iraqi children are paying far too high a price,” concluded Roger Wright, UNICEF’s special representative for Iraq.4 Riverbend often reflected on the effects of violence on the children in Iraq—especially on the 4.7 million under five years old. In her view: Many children have lost their childhood in this war and occupation. Children saw things no child should see—corpses in the streets, foreign tanks, their countrymen being shoved to the ground or detained at checkpoints for no reason—and this is the average child... Other children saw their parents killed in front of them...or lost arms, legs, eyes in an explosion or gun fire...or were abducted...thousands of children were privy to raids on homes which were once sacred and symbolized security and shelter. Many Iraqi children know a lot about politics and religion—they’ve come to understand the differences between Sunnis, Shia and Kurds— differences that weren’t emphasized before the war.5

Another blogger, a girl from Mosul who calls herself Sunshine, has written about life in Iraq since she was 14 years old. Given her age, her posts provide a lens through which readers can closely observe the lives of Iraqi children in war. The violence in Mosul was referenced in her first post on April 20, 2005: Hi, I am a teenager from Mosul in Iraq. I am doing very good in school although we have difficulties like there is no electricity most of the day, some times, I can not reach school because of firing on my way or the bridge is closed. Many times terrors attacked the police station near my house, which is very scary and happen suddenly. Therefore, you can see I do not feel safe and some times, it is difficult to concentrate, but I did

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it, I succeeded with very high marks. When some times I feel hopeless, I say to my self: I can do it, I will not give up.6

Getting to and from school—a seemingly simple act— was a dangerous daily exercise. As violence in Mosul spiked in 2006, when warring Kurds, Shia and Sunni militias vied for influence in the northern oil-rich city, Sunshine’s parents—both wealthy professionals—hired a driver to take their daughter to school. Before school one day in December 2006, tragedy struck: I was in the garage, waiting for the driver, when my neighbor “H”, came to say hello, he was standing near me, and talking with my grandma, suddenly he touched his leg and said “awwwwwwwch”, my grandma thought that he had a muscle spasm, or something like that, but I realized it was more than that, he shouted “it is a bullet.” A bullet entered his leg, he fell down on the floor, my grandma went inside the house to call his family, no one was in the street, I got panicked and started to cry and shake hysterically, I ran and brought handkerchiefs, and started to put them on his leg, he was bleeding, the driver came to drive me to school, I told him to wait, I put my bag in the car and ran back to my injured neighbor, I went to bring my mom I was out of breath, and couldn’t talk, I was terrified “I was, a man, a bullet, the car, blood, neighbor, bandage, cotton, come please” I couldn’t create a sentence, she didn’t understand me but she came and brought medical cotton and bandage with her, she ran wearing her pajamas! anyway she tied his leg so hard, to stop the bleeding, and I kept crying shaking and spreading so many handkerchiefs on the floor to cover the blood, I don’t know why! Then his wife, kids, brothers, sisters, cousins, and nephews came running toward our house, and one of his relatives took him to the hospital by his car, I went to school, and kept crying all the way long, and when I reached there, I was shaking so badly, even the teachers were worried about me,

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my mom called the headmistress and told her what happened, when I arrived school the headmistress asked me to sit in her room, the teachers were around me, trying to calm me down, after an hour I stopped shaking, but kept crying, I missed 2 classes and did so bad in geography exam, I wrote “the running winds”, and I did very silly mistakes...

Sunshine continued her story—her words expressing the horror of a conflict that has claimed millions of Iraqi lives: “R” my dearest friend came while I was in the headmistress room, she was crying and shaking too, a mine exploded in front of their car!!!! the car’s windows were broken, then US soldiers started to shoot their car! Then our friend “Sh” came crying, because she heard about me and “R”. Then our teacher Mrs. E came to the headmistress with tears in her eyes because her aunt died. Then Mrs. S she is another teacher came and said quickly “excuse me, I have to go, 3 of my neighbors were killed” At last Mrs. “A” came and said “did you know about the Arabic teacher, her nephew was killed”. Suddenly the headmistress fell down, we ran to her desk to see what happened, she fainted because of all what was going on in her room, as well as she was tired from taking care of her sick mother, and from being awake all the night. so many events, and so many bad news... After I calmed down I went to the class, I was trying to understand what happened, I was hoping that it is just a nightmare, but unfortunately it was true, horrible but true, this is my life.7

Many of Sunshine’s posts detail the violence her younger siblings faced in war-torn Mosul. When Sunshine began blogging, her sister was seven years old and her brother was only eleven months old. On May 10, 2005, she focused on the experiences of her sister. The post, titled “Bad day in

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my memory,” described an incident at her sister’s school the previous month. Problems began when “terrorists attacked the Iraqi and American soldiers and ran away.” Sunshine continued: the soldiers tried to chase them they entered the school to take places on the roof and in the upstairs class rooms, they shoot the terrorists from the school toward the road. the soldiers brought their wounded buddies to the school yard to be first aid. All the pupils became panicked, many of them were fainted. The worse thing that happened that they released the children to go home, my sister (seven years old) didn’t know the way home alone, she went to our nearby friend’s house. When my mother knew that there was a fight near my sister’s School she phoned my dad in his job asking to do some thing. My father couldn’t pass his way to the school, he went to his uncle’s house (which is near the school) and waited. My mom was sooooooo worried but an hour later our friends phoned to tell us she was there. When we were able to bring her home, she was terrified, crying and dirty. We called the doctor, he prescribed a sedative for her, and she Had a bath and my mom took her to bed. Since then she feel afraid from school, my grandmother take her and bring her from school walking, and many times gun shoots tracked them during their way and make them run or enter any house in their way.8

Fear and violence also filled the life of Sunshine’s baby brother. On May 24, 2008, Sunshine wrote about how her brother noticed a calm period one day—a realization with deep implications about “normal” life in Iraq. “There’s no explosions today,” said Sunshine’s brother. She responded:

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I was shocked and thought wow even a 4 year old kid noticed that!! I hope he can get better and start speaking well again (few months ago he lost his ability to pronounce and create sentences correctly when a car bomb exploded about 30 meters away from our house, he was in the bathroom alone and got panicked and since then he stutter a lot).9

Children and teens comprise 50 percent of Iraq’s population today—5 million of which are orphans. “Having to witness the kind of atrocities of conflict, it’s very hard on children and it really deprives them of the active childhood they should have,” said Ann Veneman, executive director of UNICEF. “If they continue exposure to this kind of violence,” she asked, “will they be the kind of productive adults that they will need to be to really participate ... in a peaceful Iraq one day?”10

Women at Risk Iraqi women who have raised children in the deadly context of post-Saddam Iraq have also experienced their own unique privations. While women also suffered alongside men under Saddam’s brutal regime, Baathist secularism ensured that they were largely shielded from open violence and oppression based on their gender. Most women in Iraqi cities were free to choose whether to don Western or traditional Arab dress, and some held prominent positions in Iraqi government and industry. According to Open Democracy, in 1989 “27 women were elected to Iraq’s 250-seat national assembly— at 10.8%, a higher ratio than the British House of Commons had at the time, with 41 women out of 650 seats (6.3%).” Only three years earlier, Iraq had become party to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimi-

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nation against Women, which committed Iraq to “take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women by any person, organization or enterprise,” end “practices which are based on the idea of the inferiority or the superiority of either of the sexes or on stereotyped roles for men and women” and “take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to suppress all forms of traffic in women and exploitation of prostitution of women.”11 In light of these promises, the post-2003 suffering of Iraq’s women appears all the more tragic. In 2003, the aspirations of women soared— but soon crashed due to the rapidly changing circumstances. “We thought there would be freedom and democracy and women would have their rights. But all the things we were promised have not come true. There is only fear and horror,” said Sawsan, an Iraqi interviewed by CNN in February 2008. Amid the chaos and breakdown of law and order, gangs of men abducted and raped Iraqi women, and some were even sold abroad. “There is no safety, and there is too much crime, too many cases, even to pursue,” a Baghdad police officer told Human Rights Watch in June 2003. “Some gangs specialize in kidnapping girls, they sell them to Gulf countries. This happened before the war too, but now it is worse, they can get them in and out without passports,” he added. The United States was largely responsible for a surge in violent fundamentalism. As the Washington Post explained: In their quest for stability in Iraq, US officials have empowered tribal and religious leaders, Sunni and Shiite, who reject the secularism that Saddam Hussein once largely maintained. These leaders have imposed strict interpretations of Islam and enforced tribal codes that female activists say limit their freedom and encourage violence against them.12

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Religious leaders and their enforcers use violence to intimidate women into donning veils, staying home, and avoiding both work and education. “A month ago I was walking from my college to my house when I was abducted in the street by three men,” said 23-year-old university student Hania Abdul-Jabbar in a July 2005 interview with IRIN. The men, she continued, dropped acid in my face and on my legs. They cut all my hair off while hitting me in the face many times telling me it’s the price for not obeying God’s wish in using the veil. Today I cannot see out of one eye because the acid made me lose my vision. I am afraid to leave my house. Now I am permanently disfigured with a monster face.13

Like Hania, many other women have suspended their education in the face of violence and harassment. In 2007, the Ministry of Information estimated that more than 70 percent of Iraqi women and girls did not attend school or higher education. “Our time is spent only at home now,” Um Ali, a married woman in Baquba, told the Inter Press Service (IPS). She added: I have not traveled outside Baquba for more than four years. The only place I can go to is my parents’ home. Housekeeping and children have been all my life; I have no goals to attain, no education to complete. Sometimes, I can’t leave home for weeks.

Fear, said Safana, a 30-year old Iraqi artist and university professor, is “always there... We don’t know who to be afraid of. Maybe it’s a friend or a student you teach. There is no break, no security. I don’t know who to be afraid of.”14 Even at home, women are not safe. So-called honor killings—murder by family-members by strangulation, stabbing or burning—have also surged. Women suspected

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of extra-marital affairs or pre-marital sex, even innocent victims of rape, are targeted by brothers, fathers and cousins hoping to restore family “honor” and “erase” the shame of the incident. In Kurdistan, 206 women were victims of honor killings in the first half of 2008—up 30 percent from the last six months of 2007. In Basra—Iraq’s second largest city and one of the few areas for which authorities keep such statistics—47 honor killing were reported in 2007. Honor killings, according to Human Rights Watch’s 2009 World Report, remain “a prevalent physical threat to Iraqi women and girls. While dozens of cases were reported in 2008, few resulted in convictions.” Iraqi laws allow leniency for such killings and police rarely investigate them, fearing involvement in family politics. “Women are being strangled by religion and tribalism,” said Muna Saud, a women’s rights activist in Basra. Despite the downturn in violence, Saud added, “they are still afraid.”15 Some religious leaders in Iraq openly defend the harsh treatment of women. “This is a Muslim country and any attack on a woman’s modesty is also an attack on our religious beliefs,” said Salah Ali, a senior Iraqi official. Reports of violence against women have even hardened the views of some religious leaders. “These incidents of abuse just prove what we have been saying for so long,” said Sheikh Salah Muzidin, a Baghdad imam. “That it is the Islamic duty of women to stay in their homes, looking after their children and husbands rather than searching for work—especially with the current lack of security in the country.” Some women do hold office in the Iraqi government, but not many. Of the 25 committees in Iraq’s parliament, only two were led by women in 2008. And while early versions of Iraqi election laws guaranteed one quarter

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of all seats to women, the quota language disappeared from the legislation as the 2009 elections approached. Today, the few women that hold elected positions are members of the fundamentalist ruling parties. “It’s all abayas [traditional Islamic overgarments covering most of the body] and female mullahs,” said activist Muna Saud.16 In 2008, Women for Women International found that there was deep pessimism among Iraqi women. Over three quarters of the 1200 Iraqi women interviewed described the situation in Iraq as “bad or very bad,” while 89 percent “expressed a great deal of concern that they or someone living in their households would become a victim of violence.” Sixty-four percent of respondents stated that “violence against women is increasing,” while 68 percent believed their “ability to walk down the street as they please has gotten worse since the US invasion.” When asked why violence increased, respondents said “there is less respect for women’s rights than before, that women are thought of as possessions, and that the economy has gotten worse.” Finally, only a quarter “expressed optimism for the future, saying they thought the overall situation would get better in the year ahead.” A 2009 Oxfam report found that despite the downturn in violence, nearly 60 percent of 1700 Iraqi women polled said safety and security remained their number one concern. Oxfam found that since 2003, 55 percent had been victims of violence, and 12 percent had been victims of domestic violence. According to Oxfam: “Women in particular are less safe now than at any other time during the conflict or in the years before.”17 The insecurity was summed up in a web posting by Neurotica, an Iraqi female blogger who lives and works in

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Baghdad’s Green Zone. In February 2008, while waiting to use a Green Zone restroom, she recalled: this girl barges in, wearing black from top to toe. The head scarf was black, sun glasses black, the coat was black, everything was black. I was curious to see who this new person is. As she took a place infront of the only unoccupied mirror, she started removing her huge black sunglasses and her black scarf, to reveal beautiful long naturally blonde hair flowing beyond her shoulders in soft golden waves. It was non other than Sandy Belle (Not her real name, but she does look like Sandy belle, the cartoon character). I smiled and said, “My god Sandy, I didn’t even recognize you.” She looked at me through the reflection of the mirror with her striking blue eyes, and smiled back gently. Yeah I know, she said while smoothing out her hair. I look scary don’t I. I shook my head, not scary per se, but different. Then she said with a sad tone, “I have no other choice Neurotica. Its either I cover up or I get killed ... We have become easy targets for those animal extremists.” The sadness in her voice slowly turned into anger. “Yes we suffered under Saddam’s regime, but atleast then, we knew who to blame. Now Neurotica, now, we don’t even know who to point the finger at? The Sadr Militias? The Badr Brigades? The Al Qaeda Wahabi extremists? Who do we blame Neurotica? Even the US forces are guilty. I don’t even know if my neighbour will tell on me, or my friend. Or that old man I buy the vegetables from. Or that small boy sitting in the corner begging. I don’t know who will shoot me first. The militia? The police? The Americans? Or maybe a drug addict, or a drunk man? Who is it gonna be? If it wasn’t for my elderly parents I would have left long long time ago.”18

Gay Life and Death The same religious zealotry and conceptions of submission and “honor” fuelling much of the post-2003 violence towards women has also hit Iraq’s gay community. In the

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mid 1980s and early 1990s, Baathist authorities tolerated homosexuality. Gay men cruised Baghdad’s Abu Nawas Street—named after the eighth-century writer famous for his homoerotic poetry—while several gay clubs and a weekly gay night at the Palestine Hotel were fixtures of the Iraqi scene. “There were so many guys, from Kuwait, from Saudi Arabia, guys in the street with makeup,” recalled Ali Hili, a gay Iraqi exile, now an activist living in London.19 Conditions deteriorated for gays after the 1991 Gulf War. Saddam, trying his best to consolidate power amid sanctions and US air strikes, reached out to Islamic conservatives. To curry favor with the powerful imams, gay clubs were shut down in 1993, and by 2001 a law was passed making homosexuality illegal. “I was arrested three times for being gay, and tortured. After several attempts, I finally was able to escape the country, going first to Dubai, then Jordan, then Syria, and finally reaching England,” said Hili. According to the Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights, between 1991 and 2003 more than 3000 men were tortured by Hussein’s regime for suspected homosexuality. As bad as conditions were under Saddam, after the collapse of his regime the lives of gay Iraqis grew even more precarious. “For gay Iraqis there is little evidence of the transition to democracy. They don’t experience any newfound respect for human rights. Life for them is even worse than under the tyrant Saddam Hussein,” said Peter Tatchell, a prominent UK human rights campaigner.20 Once in power, the Coalition Provisional Authority repealed most Baathist-era laws, including the anti-homosexuality statute, while Article 17 of the new Iraqi constitution states that “each person has the right to personal privacy as long as it does not violate the rights of others or general

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morality.” But Article 111 of the new Iraqi Penal Code negates the guarantees of Article 17. It states: “He who discovers his wife, one of his female relatives committing adultery or a male relative engaged in sodomy and kills, wounds or injures one of them, is exempted from any penalty.” This code—used to legally justify female honor killings—is also applied to homosexuals. Abu Qussay, an Iraqi father who killed his son after the son’s homosexuality was revealed, is proud of the murder. “I hanged him in my house in front of his brother to give an example to all of them and prevent them from doing the same,” Qussay told IRIN. Although he was charged with murder, he was released a month later once authorities established the circumstances of the crime.21 The Badr Corps—the Shia militia of the Iranian-backed Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC)—is believed to be responsible for the murders of dozens of homosexuals. Their rampage began in October 2005, after Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani—Shia Islam’s most powerful and influential leader in Iraq—issued a fatwa on his website outlining the punishment for “sodomy and lesbianism.” According to Sistani, these acts are: “Forbidden. Punished... The people involved should be killed in the worst, most severe way possible.” Tahseen, an underground activist in Baghdad working with Hili, told Gay City News in March 2006 that “since Sistani’s fatwa, the life of a gay person is worth nothing here, and the violence and killings have gotten much, much worse.” Added Tahseen: “Just last week, four gay people we know of were found dead. I am afraid to leave my room and go out in the street because I will be killed. We all live in fear.” While the fatwa disappeared from his site in 2006, it was never formally renounced and the Badr

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Corps—now largely integrated into Iraq’s national security forces—have been relentlessly enforcing the religious edict.22 In 2005, Ali Hili founded the Abu Nawas Group— later renamed Iraqi LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered)—that advocates for gay Iraqis and funds a network of safe houses across Iraq which protect about 40 gay men. In turn, SIIC’s Badr Corps developed sophisticated ruses to find Iraqi homosexuals in hiding. According to Hili: Badr militants are entrapping gay men via Internet chat rooms. They arrange a date, and then beat and kill the victim. Males who are unmarried by the age of 30 or 35 are placed under surveillance on suspicion of being gay, as are effeminate men. They will be investigated and warned to get married. Badr will typically give them a month to change their ways. If they don’t change their behavior, or if they fail to show evidence that they plan to get married, they will be arrested, disappear, and eventually be found dead. The bodies are usually discovered with their hands bound behind their back, blindfolds over their eyes, and bullet wounds to the back of the head.23

Murders have continued despite the downturn in violence across Iraq. “Now that Iraq’s sectarian war has cooled off, it’s open season on homosexuals and others who infuriate religious hardliners,” reported Newsweek in August 2008. In September 2008, Peter Tatchell wrote in the Guardian that Iraqi police murdered five members of Hili’s underground Iraqi LGBT group. According to Tatchell: Eye-witnesses confirm that they saw the men being led out of a house at gunpoint by officers in police uniform. Yes, Iraqi police! Nothing has been heard of the five victims since then. In all probability, they have been

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executed by the police—or by Islamist death squads who have infiltrated the Iraqi police and who are using their uniforms to carry out so-called honour killings of gay people, unchaste women and many others.24

Despite occasional reportage on this issue in Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times, the Iraqi government insists that no problem exists. “Nobody’s paying attention to this issue,” admitted Ali Dabbagh, spokesman for Prime Minister Maliki. “It is not the custom of the people of Iraq. Not only Iraq, but the whole region.” When UNAMI (the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq) issued a 2006 report noting the “environment of impunity and lawlessness” in which “Armed Islamic groups and militias” were responsible for “a number of assassinations of homosexuals in Iraq,” Dabbagh railed: There was information in the report that we cannot accept here in Iraq. The report, for example, spoke about the phenomenon of homosexuality and giving them their rights. Such statements are not suitable to the Iraqi society. This is rejected. They [the UN] should respect the values and traditions here in Iraq.25

In the US, two openly gay legislators, Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat from Wisconsin, and Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, sought to highlight the onslaught. In a June 2007 open letter, they urged Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to “utilize every diplomatic tool available to engage Prime Minister Al Maliki and President Talabani and call on the Iraqi government to crack down on the systematic prosecution of Iraqi homosexuals.” It is unknown if Rice brought the issue up with Maliki or Talabani—the deaths continue today. The same day the Guardian ran Tatchell’s September 2008 article on the kidnapping of five

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gay activists, Ali Hili posted the following urgent message from Tatchell on his blog: STOP PRESS: This morning, after this article was published, news came from Iraq that the coordinator of Iraqi LGBT in Baghdad, Bashar, aged 27, has been assassinated in a barber shop. Militias burst in and sprayed his body with bullets. The so-called improved security situation in Iraq is not benefiting all Iraqis, especially not gay ones. Islamist death squads are engaged in a homophobic killing spree, with the active encouragement of leading Muslim clerics...26

By April 2009, more than 455 gay men in Iraq had been brutally murdered since the invasion—25 bodies were recovered in Sadr City in February and March 2009 alone. According to Iraqi human rights activist Yina Mohammad, anti-gay militias pioneered a new method of murder in 2009. The technique involves inserting a particularly strong adhesive into the anus [of the victim] and sealing it completely. The adhesive is known as Amiri gum; it is an Iranian glue that seals the skin together in such a way that it can only be removed through surgery. After sealing the victims’ anus, they are then given a drink which induces diarrhea. As there is no outlet for this diarrhea, it may lead to death. Incidents of this happening have been circulating in short clips on mobile phones in Baghdad.

Ali Hili continues to support safe houses in Iraq, but funds are scarce. He urged, “In these hard times for gay Iraqis, the whole worldwide LGBT community should stand up for the rights of Iraqi LGBTs, and support these victims of sexual cleansing in Iraq.”27

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End of Faith The same unchecked fundamentalism that has so terribly harmed women and gays has also ravaged the lives of Iraq’s religious minorities. Under Saddam, religious sectarianism and the violence it can spawn were controlled by force. After Saddam, open warfare was declared on religions deemed apostate to Islam. Christians in Iraq of various denominations have been targeted. On August 1, 2004, for example, four Christian churches in Baghdad and one in Mosul were bombed. At least eleven people were killed in the Sunday attacks, with many more injured. A day after the bombings, a group called the “Committee of Planning and Follow-up in Iraq” claimed responsibility on its website. It warned “the people of the crosses”: return to your senses and be aware that God’s soldiers are ready for you. You wanted a crusade and these are its results. God is great and glory be to God and his messenger. He who has warned is excused.28

Since 2003, up to 50 percent of Iraq’s 1.5 million Christians have fled the country. Both worshippers and clergy have been targeted. In October 2006, Boulos Iskander, a Syrian Orthodox priest, was beheaded, while in January 2005 Archbishop George Yasilious of Mosul was kidnapped and released. On February 29, 2008, Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho was also abducted in Mosul—where the largest and oldest community of Chaldean Christians live. Rahho was taken from his car after he finished leading the Way of the Cross service in the city’s east. The archbishop was believed to have been shot in the leg during the siege, while two bodyguards and his driver

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were killed. Once held, kidnappers demanded a $3 million ransom and that Mosul’s Christians convert to Islam, leave their homes, or pay jizya—a tax on non-Muslims. While he was in the trunk of the kidnapper’s car, Rahho managed to use his mobile phone to call church officials, telling them not to pay any ransom. “He believed that this money would not be paid for good works and would be used for killing and more evil actions,” a church official told the New York Times. After nearly four weeks of captivity, officials received a call from kidnappers, informing them of where to find his dead body. “We, Christians of Mesopotamia, are used to religious persecution and pressures by those in power. After Constantine, persecution ended only for Western Christians, whereas in the East threats continued,” said Rahho in an interview three months before his death. “Even today we continue to be a Church of martyrs.” Today, fewer than 500,000 Chaldeans—still the largest denomination in Iraq—remain.29 Iraq’s other religious minorities have been equally devastated. As discussed in the introduction to this book, Mandaeans—adherents of the oldest surviving Gnostic religion—are targeted as “infidels.” Unlike Christians, who have strong links to other churches and charities around the world, Mandaeans lack wide support networks outside Iraq. Mandaeans are spread thinly across the country, are predominantly wealthy, and are strictly pacifist. Highly vulnerable, their numbers have dwindled from about 40,000 in 2003 to about 5000 today. “They see us as unbelievers, as a result our killing is allowed,” said Kanzfra Sattar, one of only five Mandaean bishops left worldwide. Reflecting on the sparseness of their global diaspora, Sattar added: “Our ethnic minority and our ancient religion will die off.”30

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Yazidis—adherents of a monotheistic religion thought to be an offshoot of Zoroastrianism—have also been hit hard. “I find the future of Iraq miserable, and for the Yazidi it will be even more difficult,” said Mirza Dinnayi, a Yazidi advisor to the Iraqi government. Since 2003—when Islamists declared all 500,000 of Iraq’s Yazidis “impure”—Yazidis have suffered kidnappings and execution at the same level, if not worse, as Iraq’s other religious minorities. On August 14, 2007, at around 8:00 p.m. local time, four suicide attacks occurred simultaneously in the Yazidi towns of Qahtaniya and Jazeera near Mosul. At least 500 people were killed and 1500 wounded—Iraq’s most deadly suicide attack of the war. Wide swaths of the towns were simply flattened—the three cars and one gasoline tanker used in the attacks leveled countless brick and mud buildings, trapping thousands of victims inside. “The Yazidis have been oppressed for so long,” said Wahid Mundu Hamu, a member of the Yazidi Movement for Reform and Progress, in February 2009. “And you’ll see that more and more.”31

Pushed Out Like religious minorities, ethnic minorities in Iraq have also deeply suffered. The Shabaks, culturally distinct from Kurds and Arabs, are predominantly Shia and located largely in Mosul and in the Nineveh plains between the Tigris and Khazir rivers. Reportedly, they are harassed by Kurdish militias seeking to control their areas. According to Dr. Hunain al-Qaddo, general secretary of the Democratic Shabak Assembly, Shabaks

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feel we are aliens in our own country. People look at us as if we do not deserve to live. Shabaks are being killed on a daily basis... and the media does not cover the grave and major violations in this region.32

Iraqi-Palestinians—mostly Sunni and living mainly in Baghdad, Mosul and Basra since 1948—have also seen severe repression. Once given special treatment by Saddam— namely, subsidized housing in an effort to appeal to wider pan-Arab sensibilities in the Muslim world—Iraq’s 15,000 Palestinians now suffer harsh retaliatory attacks. As Umm Muhammad, then 56 years old, recounted to IRIN: [The militias] are monsters, they killed my two sons in front of my house and later shouted saying that we Palestinians are like pigs [because] we rely on what people can give us. This is not human; they were the only good things I had in my life and now they have gone leaving behind their seven children to their unemployed widows to look after. I saw the head of my son being blown to pieces with bullets and in the eyes of those cowards I could see just happiness and excitement from doing that. Justice should be done and we have to be protected. We are human and every human being has the right to live. We have been warned to leave our house in a week but I think it will be my last day of life because from this house I will leave just in a coffin.33

Targeted mostly by Shia militia groups, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed. According to Amnesty International: Most were abducted by armed groups and their bodies found a few days later in a morgue or dumped in a street, often mutilated or with clear marks of torture. Many Palestinians have fled their homes, mostly in Baghdad, after receiving written threats warning them to leave the country or face death. Some are in hiding inside Iraq; others are stranded in makeshift camps near the Iraq/Syria border with no

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apparent solution to their plight... On a number of occasions leaflets were found in Palestinian districts threatening to kill Palestinian families if they did not leave Iraq within 10 days. These leaflets often accuse Palestinians of being ‘traitors, ‘Saddamists’, ‘Ba’athist’, and of supporting Sunni insurgents or ‘Wahabists.’”34

Appalling conditions are endured by more than 2500 Palestinian refugees in three camps along the Syrian-Iraqi border. In al-Tanf camp—located in the “no man’s land” between the Iraqi and Syrian passport control points— about 830 Palestinians live in hazardous, makeshift shelters, wedged between a highway and a brick wall. In the summer, temperatures in the dusty camp soar to 50 degrees Celcius, and in winter freezing rain floods residents’ tents. Rats and snakes harass Palestinians year-round, and trucks that speed along the large highway alongside the camp have killed two children. In the nearby al-Hol and al-Walid camps, thousands more suffer similar privations. Pushed to Iraq’s borders, and targeted within, Palestinians live precariously in the new Iraq. “We [Palestinians] have been rejected wherever we go. People don’t realise that we are educated and will fit in anywhere given the chance,” said Selwa, a mother of five, trapped in al-Tanf. “We just want to be resettled,” added 53-year-old Jamal. “I don’t mind where. I just want to live the rest of my days in peace.”35

Looting is Liberating Amid the flotsam of suffering within Iraq and along its borders lies a deeper narrative of trauma. While violence has destroyed the future of many Iraqis, it has also claimed its past. The destruction of Iraq’s cultural property, namely its

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museums, archeological sites, and ancient libraries, remains one of the deepest hidden tragedies of the 2003 invasion. Despite experts’ pleas to safeguard them prior to the war, Iraqi cultural sites were left unguarded by US troops in the chaotic days after the fall of Saddam. Over 9000 items of the Iraq Museum’s priceless collection remain missing, thousands of fragile archeological sites have been overrun, and countless manuscripts dating back millennia have been burned or destroyed. Already deeply traumatized, the nation regarded as the “cradle of civilization” was further scarred by the loss of these priceless artifacts. What these cultural treasures might have taught Iraqis—along with the rest of humankind—about our shared origins will remain a devastating mystery. The term “looting” is perhaps insufficient to describe the level of destruction that immediately followed the 2003 invasion. As advancing US troops pushed north to Baghdad, few or no troops were left behind to garrison the newly “liberated” cities. The same occurred in Baghdad, where wide swaths of city were left unpoliced. In this power vacuum, chaos soon reigned. In cities across Iraq looters stripped government buildings of all furnishings, plumbing, equipment and salvageable metals. Jeff Spurr, an Islamic and Middle East specialist in Harvard University’s Fine Arts Library, explained that before the invasion notions of the commonweal were defined solely in terms of the demands of the person in power, that person having been Saddam Hussein for twenty-five years. Consequently, only those receiving the direct rewards of the system, often at its most depraved, were deeply invested in it, and often for material gain shorn of any morality...

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What happens when such a system is overthrown? Utter chaos. Of course, most of the population, long trained in keeping its head down, would lie low. Many, whose personal morality remained intact, would desire or seek order. But those who were young and impetuous, or were utterly corrupted by the system, or who had suffered intense privation due to the system of sanctions to which Iraq had been subjected since the Gulf War, or who were already members of criminal gangs, had an opportunity to exploit the vacuum of authority, and did.

According to Paul Hughes, former director of the CPA’s Strategic Policy Office, the “magnitude of the looting defies Western conceptions.” Most buildings, he said, were stripped down to bare concrete. “Everything is gone. The wood on the wall, the... texture material on the wall, it’s all gone. The rug’s gone; everything’s gone. That’s the extent of looting over there.”36 Priceless cultural artifacts were not spared. The Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property holds state parties to “undertake to prohibit, prevent and, if necessary, put a stop to any form of theft, pillage or misappropriation of, and any acts of vandalism directed against, cultural property.” The convention—enacted in the wake of WWII—defines “cultural property” as: movable or immovable property of great importance to the cultural heritage of every people, such as monuments of architecture, art or history, whether religious or secular; archaeological sites; groups of buildings which, as a whole, are of historical or artistic interest; works of art; manuscripts, books and other objects of artistic, historical or archaeological interest; as well as scientific collections and important collections of books or archives or of reproductions of the property defined above.37

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While the US and UK are not state parties to the treaty, Iraq is, ensuring that any armed conflict within its territory is covered by the convention. The convention was cited by two high-profile NGOs during the run-up to the 2003 invasion. On February 23, 2003, and again on April 14, the International Council of Museums warned that it would “hold all so-called Coalition Force Partners accountable for the looting and damage to cultural property in Iraq... It is imperative that all parties in Iraq realise their responsibilities towards cultural property.” On March 7, the International Committee of the Blue Shield seconded this missive. “Access to authentic cultural heritage is a basic human right,” stressed the organization. Given that “Iraq is universally recognized to be especially rich in cultural heritage... The loss of parts of that heritage would certainly represent a loss to all the peoples of the world.”38 The groups called on the United States to draw up plans to protect cultural property in Iraq, and to provide contingency planning if things were to go awry. These calls went unheeded. Looters in Baghdad were hesitant at first, but were emboldened when they realized that US forces would not stop them. The looting spread, conceded then US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, due to “insufficient troops on the ground to do much about it.” Troops stationed close to looted sites were never given direct orders to interfere with the thieves. “We were never told to stop the looting, even [when] it was going on right in front of us there,” said Seth Moulton, a marine infantry officer who served in Iraq from March to September 2003: We’re a platoon of marines. I mean, we could...certainly stop looting... if that was our assigned task. Absolutely, we could have gotten it under

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control...[but] that was never our assigned task, to prevent that... We had other jobs.39

Why weren’t all available troops—as thin as they were on the ground—ordered to protect Iraqi sites? According to Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov, the Pentagon permitted the looting in a perverse attempt to undermine remnants of the Baathist regime and temporarily lower living conditions in Iraq in order to better instill “appreciation” when US forces later exerted control. As Trofimov recalled: lots of military commanders at the time told me that looting is a good thing. Looting is liberating; looting undermines the old regime. And also, some looting is ... seen by many commanders ... as necessary, because unless there is some looting before the arrival of the occupying force, then nobody appreciates the occupying force imposing order and law and... pacifying the country. Now, that second part never quite happened, unfortunately, in Iraq.

Flippant comments made by Donald Rumsfeld about the looting make sense when considered against Trofimov’s revelation. “Stuff happens!” Rumsfeld exclaimed when images of looting first aired. “Freedom’s untidy,” he added, “and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They’re also free to live their lives and do wonderful things, and that’s what’s going to happen here.”40 Whether the product of criminal ineptitude or part of a sinister Coalition plan to destroy Iraq to better facilitate the remaking of the state under US terms, the results of the looting remain the same. By mid April 2003, Iraqi army ammunition dumps across Iraq and all Iraqi government

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ministries in Baghdad—except the US-guarded Ministry of Oil and Ministry of Interior—had been stripped bare. Cultural treasures were equally devastated: dozens of libraries across the country had been sacked, thousands of archeological sites plundered, and several collections of the Iraq Museum were stolen or destroyed.

Year Zero The world’s first known library—excavated by British archeologists in 1927—was located in Mosul. The library dates to 7th century BC and at the time of its discovery contained, among other treasures, the oldest known copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Iraq’s intellectual golden age was centered in its capital, Baghdad, during the Abbasid Dynasty (750–1258). According to R. H. Lossin: In 832, the construction of the Byat al Hikma (House of Wisdom) established the new capital as an unrivaled center of scholarship and intellectual exchange. The tradition of research there brought advances in astronomy, optics, physics and mathematics. The father of algebra, Al Khawarizmii, labored among its scrolls. It was here that many of the Greek and Latin texts we accept as the foundation of Western thought were translated, catalogued and preserved. And it was from Baghdad that these works would eventually make their way to medieval Europe and help lift that continent from its benighted, post-Roman intellectual torpor.41

When the Mongols sacked Baghdad in 1258, they targeted the House of Wisdom among other knowledge centers. An oft-repeated axiom holds that the river Tigris ran black from the ink of books, while the streets ran red with the blood of the city’s inhabitants. Baghdad, as a base of learning, was not fully restored until the Ottoman era. While

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Saddam Hussein underfunded and politicized many Iraqi libraries—careful to prune Marxist, Kurdish and Shia books from many collections—vast historical archives remained intact and well guarded. But amid the chaos following the invasion, looters overran libraries across the country. The Central al-Awqaf Library, founded in 1920, contained 45,000 rare books and over 6000 Ottoman documents. When arsonists set fire to the building on April 13 or 14, 2003, frenzied staff members managed to save 5250 items, including a collection of Korans. Everything else was destroyed. Furthermore, all 175,000 books and manuscripts at the library of the University of Baghdad’s College of Arts were destroyed by fire, the entire library at the University of Basra was reduced to ash, and the Central Public Library in Basra lost 100 percent of its collection. According to Fernando Baez, director of Venezuela’s National Library and author of A Universal History of the Destruction of Books, up to one million books and ten million unique documents have been destroyed, lost or stolen across Iraq since 2003.42 The sacking of Iraq’s National Library and Archives (NLA) provides a vivid example of criminal Coalition negligence and the grinding complexities of reconstruction in Iraq. Prior to the war, the NLA maintained one of the finest collections of books and historical documents in the Middle East. Despite its importance, its doors were left unguarded by Coalition troops in April 2003—its collection of more than 12 million unique items left to the whims of professional thieves and mobs. The assault on the NLA wiped out roughly 25 percent of the book collection, about 60 percent of the Ottoman and royal Hashemite documents, and virtually all Baathist records. Further, hundreds of

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hand-written Islamic documents and texts, including a sixteenth-century text by the Islamic philosopher Ibn Sina, were stolen or destroyed. “In one word, it was a national disaster on a large scale,” said Dr. Saad Eskander, director general of the NLA. “These losses cannot be compensated. They formed modern Iraq’s historical memory.”43 The looting began on April 10 after US forces knocked down a statue of Saddam Hussein in front of the main NLA building, then simply drove away. “Minutes later,” recounted Eskander, “several parts of the NLA building were engulfed in flames. Some people embarked on looting equipments and anything of value. Two days later, the same scenario was repeated.”44 The initial wave of looting was precise, and likely led by former library staff—targeting sensitive documents outlining Iraqi foreign relations under Saddam and transcripts of thousands of Baathist courtmartials. The second wave of looting was more arbitrary. The Independent’s Robert Fisk witnessed the second wave. “I saw the looters. One of them cursed me when I tried to reclaim a book of Islamic law from a boy of no more than 10,” wrote Fisk. He continued: And the Americans did nothing. All over the filthy yard they blew, letters of recommendation to the courts of Arabia, demands for ammunition for troops, reports on the theft of camels and attacks on pilgrims, all in delicate hand-written Arabic script. I was holding in my hands the last Baghdad vestiges of Iraq’s written history. But for Iraq, this is Year Zero... the cultural identity of Iraq is being erased.45

Fisk frantically pleaded with nearby US forces to intervene but was met with indifference. According to Fisk:

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An officer shouted to a colleague that “this guy says some biblical library is on fire.” I gave the map location, the precise name in Arabic and English. I said the smoke could be seen from three miles away and it would take only five minutes to drive there. Half an hour later, there wasn’t an American at the scene and the flames were shooting 200 feet into the air.46

Dr. Eskander, an ethnic Kurd born in Baghdad, has led the arduous reconstruction of the National Library and Archives. In a 2004 speech to an international librarians’ conference, Eskander recounted the challenges he faced when he was first appointed director general upon his return to Iraq from the UK, where he had lived since he was 28 years old. According to Eskander: It was the most damaged cultural institution in the country. The building was in a ruinous state; there was no money, no water, no electricity, no papers, no pens, no furniture (apart [from] 50 plastic chairs). The morale of employees [was] very low. Three departments out of 18 ... were half-functioning. The majority of the employees stayed at home. Only a handful of the librarians tried to do something. The committee of experts set up by CPA was a talking shop and failed to get the trust and respect of NL staff... We worked very hard under unhealthy and harsh conditions and without any support from outside. Soot and dust were everywhere; we smelled and tasted them. They were in our breath, eyes, food, and water; they were on the walls and the ceilings.47

Eskander’s first goal as director general was to reopen the main reading room. He requested millions of dollars of reconstruction funds from the CPA but the NLA was given a mere $70,000. “The small budget had to cover everything, including the purchase of furniture, equipment, papers, and pens; the payment of water and electricity

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bills; and the hiring of workers and new librarians,” he recalled. Further: Tens of thousands of book and records cards were either burnt or scattered on the floors. We did not have any equipment. We were only able to buy five computers and two printers. We had no air conditioning or ventilation equipment. It was cold in the winter and very hot in the spring and the summer. Temperature could reach 60 C in the summer and below zero in the winter. We had just one old photocopy machine. There [was] no access to telephone, fax, or Internet. We were virtually cut off from the rest of the world.48

Using the small funds he had been given—supplemented by overseas donations from sympathetic libraries and supportive NGOs—Eskander slowly hired new staff, cleaned up the library building, acquired new books, preserved damaged items, took stock of what was lost, and sought what was still needed. In addition to the challenges within the National Library, Eskander and his staff had to face the chaos engulfing Baghdad. As Eskander recalled in 2004: Outside the building, forces of darkness and ignorance, the blind-hearted terrorists, were waging a campaign of indiscriminate killings against all people regardless of their race, religion, age, and gender. On many occasions my staff could not come to work because roads and bridges were blocked as a result of bomb explosions, mortar shelling, and assassinations. These ugly scenes have become part of our everyday life. In August this year, our building was shelled... On many occasions, I asked my employees to evacuate the building. Sometimes, I was not able to do so because of the deterioration of the security situation. Nevertheless, the next day, we came back to do our duty as usual. This is the way we live, and this is the condition under which we work every day.49

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From November 2006 to July 2007, the British Library hosted a blog written by Dr. Eskander. Day by day, Eskander exposed the horrifying challenges that he and his staff faced. On November 13, 2006—in one of his first postings— Eskander recounted how he spent his time trying to advise a number of my employees what to do, as they got death threats. The Sunnis, who lived in a Shi’i dominated district, were given an ultimatum to abandon their homes and the Shi’is, who lived in a Sunni dominated district, had to leave their homes. So far, two of my employees were murdered, the first worked in the Computer Department, and the second was a guard. Three of our drivers, who worked with us by contract, were murdered and three others were injured.50

One week later he was informed that Ali Salih, a young, well-liked staff member, had been “assassinated in front of his younger sister... It was a very sad day. All the people who knew Ali were weeping that day. All were depressed and morale was at its lowest.”51 In early December 2006 Eskander wrote, “Our main concern now is the snipers.” The NLA was located near the most dangerous sections of Baghdad—one kilometer from the sniper-rich Haifa Street and half a kilometer from the deadly al-Fadhal district. Eskander’s Christian staff found it particularly hard to cope with traveling to and from work. In late December 2006, Eskander wrote: We have four Christians in our institution. The first two, ‘A’ and ‘B’, work in the Archive, the third, ‘C’, in the Library, and the fourth, ‘D’, in my office. I gave them a 5-day break to celebrate Christmas. ‘D’ took just one day off. She continued to show up, even when the main roads were blocked. I advised her to cover her hair, when passing through dangerous areas (i.e.

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under the control of the militias and armed gangs). She said that she was wearing Hijab for some time to hide her identity (i.e. being Christian).52

Conditions for Eskander and his staff worsened in 2007. On January 8 Eskander noted “the same old scenario: explosions, shelling and exchange of fires,” while February 4 “was another bad day” marked by nearby attacks.53 He later received news that two librarians had gone missing: one Shia and one Sunni whom had been traveling together. He recalled: The NLA was in a state of total chaos. Some female librarians were crying loudly. They thought that both librarians were killed. I asked my staff to go back to their work. Thirty minutes later, the kidnapped Sunni librarian returned to our building. My staff gathered around him very quickly; some were kissing him and other congratulating him about his release... One hour later I learnt from several sources that my librarian was executed and that his body was dumped in an abandoned alley. We were all devastated. I thought the news might not be true. But I received a call from my assistant, which confirmed the fact that the librarian was executed soon after the kidnapping. The killers rang the family of the victim, telling them in cold blood that they murdered their son and that they should collect his body.

Eskander added: “I have come to realise that nowadays in Baghdad, the perfect human being would be one who can switch off all his senses. To be blind and deaf is not a curse anymore, but a blessing in disguise.”54 These challenges did not prepare Eskander for what happened on March 5, 2007—“the day when books were assassinated by the forces of darkness, hatred and fanaticism.” While being interviewed in his office by two reporters from the Washington Post, a massive blast rocked

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the NLA—nearby al-Mutanabi Street had been destroyed. The small street, named after Iraq’s most famous poet, contained dozens of publishing houses, printing companies, bookstores, and old cafés frequented by Iraq’s impoverished intelligentsia. About 95 percent of the NLA’s new publications were purchased from sellers there. Eskander witnessed the aftermath of the bombing from his office window. He recalled: Tens of thousands of papers were flying high, as if the sky was raining books, tears and blood. The view was surreal. Some of the papers were burning in the sky. Many burning pieces of papers fell on the INLA’s building... Immediately after the explosion, I ordered the guards to prevent all my staff from leaving the building, as there was a possibility of another bomb attack. My staff and I were watching the movement of a number of civilian and military ambulances, carrying killed and injured people. It was a heartbreaking view.55

Confronted by the destruction of al-Mutanabi, sustained sniping, mortar and rocket attacks, murdered staff, harassment from National Guardsmen while driving to and from work, lack of funding from the Iraqi central government, and lack of electricity and water, Eskander’s health declined and his online postings grew darker and more reflective. On April 3, 2007, for example, a dead body was discovered on the grounds of the NLA. Eskander wrote: The dead person was someone; he could be a brother, son, father or husband of someone; a human being without a face or a name. It is extremely sad to die as a total stranger in your own town and among your own people, or to be considered as just a number to be added to those who already died. Death in such a manner turns a human into a thing.56

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On July 31, 2007, Eskander ended his online diary. The final post, titled “Last Note,” simply read: There will be no Diary any more. The real reason is that I feel guilty about writing it. For sometime now, I have felt deep-down that I have been exploiting the tragedies and sacrifices of my staff, especially those who lost their lives. I discovered that by writing the diary I put a very heavy moral burden on my shoulders; as if I have been emotionally blackmailing the readers. I do strongly believe that I have no right to do so. I seize this opportunity to apologize sincerely to everybody.57

Eskander’s health has since recovered, and the NLA—now staffed with more than 400 employees—continues its reconstruction. The library has special, almost sacred, significance to Eskander. For him, it is not just a library. “What makes a Kurd or a Sunni or a Shia have something in common is a national library,” he said. “It is where the national identity of a country begins.”58

Lost Antiquity In 1979, Saddam Hussein—in an effort to link his regime to Iraq’s storied past—declared: “Antiquities are the most precious relics the Iraqis possess, showing the world that our country ... is the legitimate offspring of previous civilizations which offered a great contribution to humanity.”59 Under Saddam, museums flourished and were well guarded, while smuggling was punishable by death. The only significant destruction of Iraqi antiquities to occur on Saddam’s watch occurred in the country’s south. Several small regional museums were sacked during the Shia uprising of 1991, while no-fly zones prevented the Iraqi Air Force from controlling illegal digging and smuggling in the mid

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1990s. Still, when US troops invaded in 2003 they entered a country rich with cultural property. The Iraq Museum held, among other pieces, the priceless Warka vase (a 5000-year-old carved alabaster vessel, considered one of the world’s first sculptures) and the Basitke statue (a life-like bronze statue of a young man dating to 2300 BC), while untold treasures laid buried across Iraq’s 10,000 registered archeological sites. But the same criminal negligence that doomed the National Library also dealt a lethal blow to Iraq’s museums and dig sites. On March 26, 2003, the Pentagon Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) sent a memo to commanders about important Iraqi sites that they were to protect. The missive listed 16 institutions that “merit securing as soon as possible to prevent further damage, destruction and/or pilferage of records and assets.” According to the ORHA memo, the Iraq Museum was a “prime target for looters” and was to be a top priority for securing second only to the Central Bank. Looting at the museum, the memo added, would cause “irreparable loss of cultural treasures of enormous importance to all humanity.” When ORHA inquired in April 2003 why the Oil Ministry—ranked at number 16 by the memo—was the only listed site secured, Pentagon officials told them that the memo was never read. Martin Sullivan, then chair of the President’s Advisory Committee on Cultural Property—a panel which advises the executive on matters relevant to cultural protection—also met with Pentagon officials several times before the invasion to stress the importance of safeguarding the Iraq Museum. “All of that had gotten lost. Most of the units on the ground had no orders... The

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emphasis was on shock and awe,” said Sullivan, who later resigned his post on the Advisory Committee in protest.60 Like the NLA, the Iraq Museum was also left unguarded, though troops were stationed less than a kilometer from the site. Fortunately, museum staff evacuated some of the museum’s treasures to a secret vault in the Central Bank, protecting them from the looting. “Everything was evacuated, except for some unfortunate pieces—they were either very fragile or too heavy to be taken away,” recalled Dr. Donny George Youkhanna, former director of the Iraq Museum. What was left behind was smashed, burned, or taken. Over 15,000 items were lost—only 6000 of which have since been recovered.61 Dr. Youkhanna, an Assyrian Christian born in Iraq’s Anbar province, worked for the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage under Saddam and in November 2003 became general director of the museum. He was on the grounds on Tuesday, April 8, 2003, as US tanks swarmed Baghdad. According to Youkhanna, a heavy battle raged between US troops and Iraqi militiamen at the Ministry of Information, roughly 500 meters from the museum. In an interview with Executive Intelligence Review, he recalled: This sound started coming closer to the museum, and again, we started having shooting from the other side of the museum; that was from the area where the central bus station is. Around 11:00 in the morning we started hearing Apache fighter helicopters on top of us. All this was happening, and we were confident that these Americans would not hit the museum, because they should know this is a museum, and we know they were warned by the scholars from the United States and Britain. But, we saw some Iraqi armed militiamen—those could be the so-called

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Fedayeen—they jumped back into our garden, and we saw them firing against the tanks. This meant that our museum had become a target.62

Youkhanna fled through the back door of the museum with three other employees. “We went out with the intention that we would come back; as soon as the war, or the battle, would stop in the museum area.” Fierce fighting and bridge closures throughout the city prevented Youkhanna from returning for several days. “We don’t know exactly what happened on Wednesday [April 9]; but Thursday [April 10], Friday [April 11], and Saturday [April 12], looters had been roaming around inside the museum and inside our administration area,” said Youkhanna. On April 14, Youkhanna reentered the still-unguarded museum. As he walked through the administrative entrance, it looked like a hurricane had hit the building from inside. They took any kind of equipment that we had: computers, cameras, levelling machines, theodolites, copying machines, photocopy machines, refrigerators, furniture, television sets—even my coffee machine! They left nothing. Only the papers that we had, they were just scattered. In my room, I had about a 2-foot pile of papers, just thrown away. My desk was in three or four pieces, it was completely dismantled. I found my chair about 100 meters away. And when we went into the museum and started checking, we immediately learned that some very important pieces that were left in the galleries were taken away.63

The initial catalogue of missing treasures included the Warka vase and Basitke statue. While these items were later recovered, roughly 9000 items—mostly gems, jewelry, terracotta figurines and cylinder seals from the museum’s basement storerooms—remain missing. And what looters

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couldn’t take, they destroyed. In the public gallery, recalled Youkhanna: They smashed some of the terracotta lions we had from Tell Harmal from the old Babylonian period of 1900 BC and from the Hatrian [period] before that. We had a showcase showing examples of stamped bricks from the early times to the Roman times. They took nine of those bricks; it looks like they chose nine bricks, it’s not just random taking them. In the Assyrian gallery, we noted the statue of King Shalmanesar III was missing, and another statue was smashed. In the Hatrian gallery, they took the head of a statue. They smashed three Roman statues we found in Hatra, and took their heads away. They took the head of Nike—that’s the goddess of victory—an almost complete statue made of bronze we found in Hatra.64

Independent journalist Chris Allbritton was in Baghdad during the sacking of the museum. “I saw the devastation at the Iraqi Museum... And the Americans weren’t doing anything. They would sit at certain intersections, but they wouldn’t actually get out of the Humvees, or out of the tanks, and ... really do much,” he said. Barbara Bodine, a former CPA reconstruction official, recalled a general lack of urgency among US commanders when the looting was first reported. When she heard the museum had been looted, she said, we went next door to where the senior military leadership was. And said, you know, we had word that the museum was being looted, and you know, we needed to get troops over there, and protect it. And this was a, you know, a world heritage, not just an Iraqi. And I will say, it was very interesting. The British generals, by and large, understood the importance of protecting the museum, and started to respond almost immediately. And the American generals, by and large, just looked at us with, “What do you expect us to do about that?”65

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Donald Rumsfeld would later commend—not reprimand—his generals for failing to stem looting at the museum. “I thought the battlefield commanders made the right decisions, and the right decisions were to defeat the enemy, instead of providing security around a museum or something,” he told CNN in February 2005. Dr. Youkhanna was furious at the United States for failing to secure the Iraq Museum: I knew American forces were beside the museum and didn’t do anything. It was a very, very big mistake that could have been prevented. Like most Iraqis, I thought the arrival of the Americans was very welcome, but when you work as an archaeologist for 30 years, love the field, and know each piece, and then you see all the destruction and looting—this was very hard. I can’t support people who did not protect the museum. And I can’t blame the soldiers—they didn’t have orders.66

Despite millions of dollars from NGOs and support from the US State Department, reconstruction at the Iraq Museum has been slow. Like the NLA, the museum is close to deadly Haifa Street, and since 2003 a museum archeologist, accountant, and driver have been killed. In early 2006, Youkhanna sealed the museum’s remaining collections following a mass kidnapping on a street close to the museum. Following the kidnapping, Youkhanna asked his senior staff: What can we do if these people come to the museum, accuse us of hiding something in our storerooms, and demand to go in? Can we stop them? We agreed there was no stopping them, so we started immediately securing the museum. We put antiquities in the registration rooms and labs into boxes, took them down into the storeroom, and started welding the iron doors. For a day and a half, we welded all the doors leading to

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the storerooms and to the museum area. And the last thing we did was to build a wall half a meter thick with bricks and concrete at the entrance. The museum was completely sealed.67

Compounding the slow pace of the Iraq Museum’s reconstruction was interference from the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities—a ministry largely staffed by followers of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. According to Youkhanna: From the start they started sending people loyal to al-Sadr’s party to monitor and control everything in our institution. They interfered in every single thing and changed things without our knowledge. They encouraged the staff of the department to go directly to the ministry, rather than through us. They removed people not connected to the party and put people in who were not qualified. It is worse than under Saddam.

Further complicating things was Youkhanna’s Christian faith: The last straw was when I was told by the minister’s adviser that I should look after myself. He said the al-Sadr party had given an order that since I was Christian, I should not be allowed to keep my job, that it was very important a Shiite Muslim have the position. I was shocked. I understood that if I stayed, they would fire me, or it would lead to problems or even assassination. That happens. A month or so later—the 30th of July [2006]—I applied for retirement. And the minister approved it immediately. Normally, a minister would call to find out the reason a senior official resigned, so it was clear he was waiting for me to quit. A week or so later we left Baghdad.68

From there he went to Syria, then New York, where he now teaches archeology and history at Stony Brook University. On February 23, 2009, his replacement reopened the first floor of the Iraq Museum—a move that Youkhanna deemed reckless and premature given unstable security conditions

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in Baghdad and still-incomplete collections. “I believe the museum is being used in this case for political reasons only,” he said.69 Though the Iraq Museum has received modest media attention and millions of dollars from overseas donors to protect and restore its collection, Iraq’s vast archeological sites have not. According to McGuire Gibson, professor of Mesopotamian archaeology at the University of Chicago, hundreds of sites “are still being destroyed” in 2009. Experts believe that tens of thousands of artifacts have been removed by illegal digging. According to Gibson: The illegal digging is the supply end of a long chain of agents, Iraqi dealers, smugglers, foreign dealers and academics who authenticate objects for collectors, and museums that provide the market. The men who do the digging are poor farmers and townspeople, many of them disbanded Iraqi soldiers who have no alternative employment. Local taxi drivers provide transport. A few sheikhs provide some organisation, while agents for regional dealers arrive periodically to pick out the best pieces. Smugglers carry the artifacts out of Iraq by a number of routes. Jewelry and antique shops in Aleppo, Damascus, Amman and Beirut sell some; a lot seems to be going through the United Arab Emirates, to judge by websites located there. But the best pieces are sent to Europe, where shops in Germany, Holland and elsewhere offer them openly.70

Iraqi antiquities are still sold widely over the web. An investigation by Neil Brodie of Stanford University’s Archeology Center found that 55 websites in December 2006 were offering Iraqi antiquities, including cuneiform tablets and cylinder seals of dubious certification. By September 2008, the number had increased to 72 websites. This continued theft and sale of Iraqi antiquities remains an open wound in a country still plagued by daily tragedy.

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“It’s a very sad situation, what happens to the antiquities and to these pieces of art, that belong to mankind,” said Youkhanna. “They are the heritage of every single person in the world. And they are smuggled and massacred like this.”71

Iraqi Sociocide Taking into account the destruction of Iraq’s cultural treasures, the surge of violent fundamentalism, the decimation of its economic and social infrastructures, and the hardships experienced by women, children, and minorities, it is arguable that US aggression in Iraq has resulted in sociocide—the obliteration of an entire way of life. This term was first used systematically by Keith Doubt in Understanding Evil: Lessons From Bosnia. “Not only in Bosnia but also in Rwanda, Chechnya, the Middle East, and now Iraq armed conflict assumes a demented purpose,” Doubt wrote. He continued: Not only are houses destroyed, but also the prestige of the home. Not only are women and children murdered, but also the city itself, its rituals and ways of life. Not only are a particular group of people and its infrastructures assaulted, but also its history and collective memory. Not only is a social system demolished, but also society itself. In the first case, the violence is called domicide; in the second, urbicide; and in the third, genocide. In the fourth case, however, it is necessary to introduce a new term, a neologism, sociocide.72

Sociocide, he explained, entailed a “coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of the essential foundations of society.” Its effects are both cruel and pervasive. They include destruction of the social—e.g. “solidarity, identity, family, social institutions, self-con-

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sciousness”—and a corrupt state where “distrust and bad faith become the dominant orientations of human beings living together.”73 The willful destruction of Iraq and her people by the United States and allies during the Gulf War, UN sanctions period, and second Gulf War—especially in light of US-condoned looting in April 2003 and support of violent fundamentalists—constitute attempted sociocide. Iraqis now endure precarious peace punctuated by assassinations and suicide attacks and a fragile democracy still split along ethnic and sectarian lines. But sociocide did not run its course. Despite a coordinated attack on Iraqi people and institutions, vibrant social strands remain intact. Iraqis like Youkhanna, Eskander, Riverbend and Sunshine—plus the countless others that have worked to restore Iraq and document its destruction—reveal an ethos of resilience amid carnage. Against all odds, Iraqi identity has not been destroyed.

Postscript: People of No Moment

On February 27, 2009, in a speech announcing American withdrawal from Iraq by 2011, President Barack Obama praised the US military for “extending a precious opportunity to the people of Iraq.” The United States, he added, did not cause, but rather “fought against tyranny and disorder” in the Middle Eastern country. Obama then directly addressed the Iraqi people: Our nations have known difficult times together. But ours is a bond forged by shared bloodshed, and countless friendships among our people. We Americans have offered our most precious resource—our young men and women—to work with you to rebuild what was destroyed by despotism; to root out our common enemies; and to seek peace and prosperity for our children and grandchildren, and for yours.

With these remarks—virtually indistinguishable from those of his predecessor—President Obama unveiled a familiar narrative that excluded Iraqi experiences of suffering. As the editors of Media Lens later remarked: America and Iraq have indeed known “difficult times together”—the US has caused them and Iraq has suffered them. The US helped install a vicious dictator, Saddam Hussein, supporting him through his worst crimes, which Western governments and media worked hard to bury out of sight. It then inflicted the devastating 1991 Gulf War and 12 years of genocidal sanctions, which claimed one million Iraqi lives. The 2003 war and invasion have cost a further million lives, have reduced 4 206

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million people to the status of destitute refugees, and reduced a wrecked country to utter ruin.1

Obama’s speech revealed the deep disconnect between truth and political discourse that still poisons so much of the debate on Iraq. While a presidential candidate, Obama rightly described the 2003 invasion as a war that “should never have been authorized and never been waged.”2 But his rhetoric quickly changed once he became leader of the nation responsible for so many deaths. The late Harold Pinter, in his acceptance speech for the 2005 Nobel Prize for literature, spoke of this same disconnect between truth and politics. According to Pinter: The majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.3

In the service of power, Iraqi voices have been excluded from public debate with the aim of making unnecessary and illegal aggression appear just. Just war doctrine invokes two reasonable tests: jus ad bellum, whether the decision to go to war is justified, and jus in bello, whether specific strategies and methods of conducting war are acceptable. The false pretexts for US aggression in Iraq (i.e. “liberating” Kuwait in 1991, “degrading” Hussein during the UN sanctions-era, and “disposing” of weapons of mass destruction in 2003), coupled with the misery and death that these acts have caused, make a mockery of any just war rationalization. If the 2003 Iraq war leads to even a modest reassessment on issues relating to just war and foreign invasions within

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the Unites States and its allied countries, then this will be one positive legacy of the carnage. But it will have come at the price of millions of unnecessary deaths—a level of destruction approaching a true Iraqi sociocide. In particular, the 2003 invasion remains an example of imperialist adventurism founded on self-interest and corrosive ideology. Although cogent arguments have been made elsewhere for war crimes charges against the architects of the war—calls we duly support—some still swear by the merits of the invasion.4 “I think that the original campaign was masterfully done,” remarked Dick Cheney in the waning days of his vice presidency, adding that post-invasion chaos occurred because “there weren’t any Iraqis early on who were willing to stand up and take responsibility for their own affairs.” Such deceit is designed to silence Iraqi narratives and conceal the true intentions of the invasion— namely to project American influence in the Middle East, reshape the Iraqi economy, and ensure American access to Iraq’s vast mineral wealth. But, to a large extent, these goals have failed. Paul Bremer’s radical economic reforms have been abandoned, while the Iraqi oil industry has fended off American subjugation. Sabotage soared when rumors spread following the invasion that the Iraqi oil industry was to be privatized. “We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities and pipelines built on the premise that privatization is coming,” said Falah al-Jibury, an Iraqi-born oil consultant. At the same time, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani issued a fatwa declaring that Iraqi oil was property of the “community”—meaning the state—a move that obstructed US designs. Today, Iran is the chief power broker in the Middle East—not the United States. Iraq’s Oil Ministry— along with the Ministry of Interior and Finance—are in the

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hands of pro-Iran Shiite factions. Iran has pressured Iraqi authorities to favor Chinese and Russian oil companies over Western ones. Indeed, the first major oil contract signed since 2003—a 2008 $3 billion deal to develop the Ahdad oilfield—was made with the China National Petroleum Corporation. No-bid deals with ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, Total, BP and several smaller companies, arranged shortly after the invasion, were abruptly cancelled by the Iraqi government in September 2008.5 The new Iraq has settled into a state of relative calm compared to the worst days of violence following the invasion. But violence still continues—including within central districts of Baghdad that were long considered “safe.” As an editorial in the Iraqi newspaper Azzaman noted in March 2009: The rate of violence now, though not on the scale it used to be, is as serious as when almost all of Baghdad was out of US or Iraqi control. The ongoing violence, not least the recent clashes in the Fadhl District in the heart of Baghdad, tell that US and Iraqi government’s bragging about relative security are hollow and false.6

Violence in Iraq is now comparable to levels reached in 2003. “We didn’t create a paradise in Iraq; we created a hell,” explained journalist Nir Rosen in April 2009. “And now, maybe it’s gone down from the seventh rung of hell to the second rung of hell. It’s still pretty bad for most Iraqis, in terms of water, electricity. There are still explosions.”7 Sunshine, the young Iraqi blogger from Mosul, continues to track violence and insecurity in her hometown. On August 14, 2009, she wrote:

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My dad’s friend belongs to the Shabak’s cast (the Shabak are kurds but they are against Kurdistan’s government, and they are Shiites Muslims) my dad called to see how he and his family doing after a horrifying explosion which was heard all over the city he said “I buried today 41 bodies, and there are more under the wreckage” my dad became speechless, imagine loosing 41 person in one day, family members, relatives, friends, kids, women, old and young... it is unfair... in few minutes hundreds lost their houses, hundreds were killed, and hundreds are suffering from severe injuries, they may die, or live cretins or handicapped. Why? what was their guilt.....8

Amid sporadic violence, over a million citizens killed, three times that number injured, 1–2 million widows, 5 million orphans, and terrible destruction to Iraq’s civil society, economy and cultural heritage, the bitter taste of war and occupation persists. Fifty-six percent of 2228 Iraqis polled in February 2009 said that it was wrong for the US to invade in 2003—up from 50 percent in 2008—while 70 percent said America was doing a bad job in Iraq. Fifty-seven percent believed President Barack Obama will make things worse or not make a difference in Iraq, while 62 percent hailed Muntadar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at George W. Bush in December 2008, as a hero. Thus President Barack Obama’s plan to withdraw all troops could not have come soon enough. Violence that still afflicts Iraq—more than 4300 civilian deaths in 2009—should not tempt the Obama Administration to delay withdrawal. Rather, the sooner US troops leave, the sooner Iraqis can move beyond the trauma of war and occupation, and assert their own sovereignty. In turn, Iraq’s still unstable balance of power between Sunnis, Shia, Kurds, and other minorities, will reach equilibrium. The only positive role remaining for the United States involves payment for reconstruction,

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resettlement and reparations—costs that some analysts argue could total well into the trillions of dollars.9 On the eve of the 2009 provincial elections which saw Shia and Sunni fundamentalist parties lose ground, UNHCR officials interviewed dozens of Iraqi refugees across the Middle East. “I do not care who will control the majority of seats or who will be in power, but what I truly hope for is a peaceful Iraq that can accommodate all Iraqis, irrespective of their ethnic or religious affiliation,” said one refugee in Cairo. Others were less hopeful. “The elections carry no significance... The country is destroyed and people care only for their personal gains [and] positions,” said another in Syria.10 Only time will tell if the wounds inflicted by the United States and its allies will fully heal or if they will continue to fester. While patchy reconstruction will proceed, the physical, material and existential scars will remain for generations to come. Now, as US troops slowly depart from the broken state, Iraqis must choose how best to salvage Iraq—or whether it’s worth salvaging at all. Despite modest security gains, millions of Iraqis remain displaced within Iraq and in Syria, Jordan and beyond. In a March 2009 Facebook message to the authors, Ahmed—the Iraqi architecture student now living in Jordan featured in Chapters 1 and 2—reiterated his reluctance to return: Iraq is now somehow safer than the very unsafe situation which means still not as safe as it used to be. or at least not safer than where i am now especially for me as a young man. lots of scholars, doctors and university professors went back to resume their works but for us the young ones it’s better for us to start in a better place and maybe after 10 years we will go back and see if we can live there ... the only architectural market

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that didn’t collapse is Iraq. but it’s not a choice to go there. i won’t even think of that.11

While Iraq’s Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research reported that over 1000 Iraqi professionals have returned home since 2008, there has not been a wide-scale influx of lower- and middle-class Iraqis. For Patrick Cockburn: “The best barometer for how far Iraq is ‘better’ is the willingness of the 4.7 million refugees, one in five Iraqis who have fled their homes and are now living inside or outside Iraq, to go home.” According to the International Organization for Migration, only 250,000 displaced Iraqis had returned as of April 2009. Changed demographics in Iraq’s major cities in the wake of sectarian strife remain the primary obstacle. Once mixed, Baghdad is now a predominantly Shia city. Only 25 of the original 200 mixed Sunni-Shia areas remain. Many returnees find their homes destroyed or occupied by squatters. “Iraqis deserve to come back in safety and in dignity,” said UNHCR’s Andrew Harper in May 2009. “In a lot of the country, that just isn’t possible yet.”12 More than seven years after the invasion, many Iraqi citizens now see unemployment, rising prices and a lack of basic services as more of a daily threat than violence and insecurity. Baghdad’s water system is still dysfunctional—up to 90 percent of the city’s drinking water is unsafe—while millions still rely on costly private generators for electricity. Depleted of resources and manpower, and with a dwindling economy due largely to the declining price of oil, Iraq faces enormous challenges that—unlike unchecked war and conflict—may not attract the attentions of the Western media. Thus Iraqi blogs remain the best source of news

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on Iraq. “Every night before going to sleep we turn on the water tap in the kitchen, put a metal pot upside down under it and keep the kitchen door open,” wrote Salam Pax in January 2009. “This, my dear friends, is the best way to wake up when you finally get running water in the middle of the night.” Added Salam: When the electricity makes one of its rare visits once or twice a day everyone in the house runs around doing things that can’t be done on a generator. Washing machines, vacuum cleaners are turned on and every portable light that needs charging is plugged in. Then cross your fingers and hope the electricity stays long enough for your washing machine to run a full cycle.13

Riverbend—who abandoned blogging in late 2007 after fleeing Iraq to Syria—discussed in a 2006 interview why Iraqi blogs are vital. “Iraq inspires me to blog,” she said. While I began blogging as a way to vent frustrations and fears about the instability and insecurity, I continue because I feel the media covers the situation in my country in a very general way. Many articles don’t even begin to touch the daily reality Iraqis face.

Harold Pinter highlighted this fact in his 2005 Nobel speech. Iraqis, he said, are “of no moment. Their deaths don’t exist. They are blank. They are not even recorded as being dead.” Unearthing precise body counts and reclaiming lost narratives—simply by reading, thinking about, and sharing them—are crucial, in Pinter’s words, in “restoring what is so nearly lost to us—the dignity of man.”14 If in this book we have made a contribution, however small, towards this aim, then we will have achieved our goal.

Notes

All URLs active as of December 15, 2009

Introduction   1. Sadi (interviewed by Michael Otterman and Tamara Fenjan), Damascus, Syria, February 1, 2008. Please note: Portions of this interview and background on the Mandaean religion first appeared in: Tamara Fenjan and Mike Otterman, “If You are Not Muslim in Iraq, You are Trash,” New Matilda, May 13, 2008 .   2. Sudarsan Raghavan, “Iraqi Women, Fighting for a Voice,” Washington Post, December 7, 2008 ; Elizabeth Kendal, “Iraq: The Persecution of Mandaeans,” ASSIST News Service, January 31, 2004 ; “Background Information on the Situation of Non-Muslim Religious Minorities in Iraq,” UNHCR, October 2005, p. 5 ; Angus Crawford, “Mandaeans – A Threatened Religion,” BBC, October 19, 2008 .   3. Tony Taylor, Denial: History Betrayed, Melbourne University Publishing: Melbourne, 2008.   4. Naomi Klein, “Baghdad Year Zero,” Harper’s, September 2004 .   5. Kevin Zeese, “The Corporate-U.S. Takeover of the Iraq Economy,” American Chronicle, May 9, 2006 ; Jimmy Carter, “State of the Union Address,” Jimmy Carter Library, January 23, 1980 ; Michael Klare, “Repudiate the Carter Doctrine,” Foreign Policy in Focus, January 22, 2009 .   6. Zeese, “The Corporate-U.S. Takeover of the Iraq Economy”; Elliott Abrams et al., “Statement of Principles,” Project for the New American Century, June 3, 1997 .   7. Rebecca Leung, “Bush Sought ‘Way’ to Invade Iraq?” 60 Minutes, CBS News, January 11, 2004 ; Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith, “False Pretenses,” The War Card, The Center for Public Integrity, January 23, 2008 ; Joel Roberts, “Plans For Iraq Attack Began On 9/11,” CBS News, September 4, 2004 .   8. Charles H. Ferguson, No End in Sight: Iraq’s Descent into Chaos, Public Affairs: New York, 2008, p. 110; Juhasz quoted in Zeese, “The Corporate-U.S. Takeover of the Iraq Economy.” 214

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  9. Juhasz quoted in Zeese, “The Corporate-U.S. Takeover of the Iraq Economy.”

Chapter 1   1. Khaled Yacoub Oweis, “Sweden Urges Europe to Take More Iraqi Refugees,” Reuters, March 5, 2009 ; “Statistics on Displaced Iraqis around the World,” UNHCR, September 2007 .   2. Amir (interviewed by Richard Hil and Karim), Rinkeby, Sweden, July 5, 2008.   3. Iraqi man in community center (interviewed by Richard Hil and Karim), Ronna, Sweden, July 6, 2008.   4. Amelia Templeton, “UNHCR Releases Trauma Study,” Human Rights First, January 23, 2008 .   5. Laith (interviewed by Michael Otterman and Tamara Fenjan), Amman, Jordan, February 3, 2008. Please note: Portions of this interview and background information first appeared in Fenjan and Otterman, “If You are Not Muslim in Iraq, You are Trash.”   6. Kevin Phillips, “American Petrocracy,” The American Conservative, July 17, 2006 .   7. “NSD 45: US Policy in Response to the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait,” United States Security Council, August 20, 1990 .   8. Richard Sale, “Exclusive: Saddam Key in Early CIA Plot,” UPI, April 10, 2003 .   9. Christopher Dickey and Evan Thomas, “How the US Helped Create Saddam Hussein,” Newsweek, September 23, 2002 ; Michael Dobbs, “US Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup,” Washington Post, December 30, 2002 . 10. Thomas, “How the US Helped Create Saddam Hussein”; “The Clouds of Death” (editorial), March 27, 1988, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, p. 2B; David B. Ottaway, “US Decries Iraqi Use Of Chemical Weapons; ‘Grave Violation’ of International Law Cited,” Washington Post, March 24, 1988, page A37. 11. Dickey and Thomas, “How the US Helped Create Saddam Hussein”; Subhy Haddad, “Iraqi Leader Says Nothing to Hide on Mass Weapons,” Reuters, April 12, 1990. 12. Special to the New York Times, “Confrontation in the Gulf; Excerpts From Iraqi Document on Meeting With U.S. Envoy,” New York Times, September 23, 1990 ; Phyllis Bennis and Denis J. Halliday (interviewed by David Barsamian), “Iraq: The Impact of Sanctions and US Policy,” in Anthony Arnove, ed., Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War, South End Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2000, p. 40.

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13. Bennis and Halliday (interviewed by Barsamian), “Iraq: The Impact of Sanctions and US Policy,” pp. 40–41. 14. Leonard Doyle and Tony Barber, “Soviet Peace Plan Dies a Quiet Death,” Independent On Sunday, February 24, 1991, p. 3. 15 “NSD 54: Responding to Iraqi Aggression in the Gulf,” United States Security Council, January 15, 1991 . 16. “Military Statistics—Gulf War Coalition Forces (most recent) by country,” Nation Master ; Donald I. Blackwelder, “The Long Road to Desert Storm and Beyond: The Development of Precision Guided Bombs” (thesis), School of Advanced Airpower Studies, Maxwell Air Force Base Alabama, May 1992, p. 38 ; Geoff Simons, “The Scourging of Iraq Part 1,” from Geoff Simons, The Scourging of Iraq: Sanctions, Law and Natural Justice, Macmillan Press: London, 1996 . 17. Nuha al-Radi, “Baghdad Diary,” Granta: A Paperback Magazine of New Writing, no. 42, pp. 209–237; Nuha al-Radi, Baghdad Diaries: A Woman’s Chronicle of War and Exile, Vintage: New York, Amazon Kindle Edition, 2007. 18. This and the following excerpts from Nuha al-Radi’s account of the 1991 invasion were drawn from al-Radi, “Baghdad Diary,” Granta. These excerpts—as with those from other diarists and bloggers cited throughout the book—have been condensed, but the original grammar and spelling maintained to better convey the immediacy of the authors’ work. 19. “John Sweeney Responds on Mass Death in Iraq,” Media Lens, June 2,8 2002 . 20. Barton Gellman, “Allied Air War Struck Broadly in Iraq; Officials Acknowledge Strategy Went Beyond Purely Military Targets,” Washington Post, June 23, 1991 . 21. “The Lack of Warning Prior to Attack: The Ameriyya Air Raid Shelter,” in “Needless Deaths in the Gulf War: Civilian Casualties During the Air Campaign and Violations of the Laws of War,” Human Rights Watch, New York, 1991 . 22. Abbas S. Mehdi, “The Iraqi Economy under Saddam Hussein: Development or Decline” (book review), Middle East Policy, Summer 2003 . 23. “Iraqi civilian fatalities in the 1991 Gulf War,” in Carl Conetta, The Wages of War: Iraqi Combatant and Noncombatant Fatalities in the 2003 Conflict, Project on Defense Alternatives, October 20, 2003 ; “Our Common Responsibility: The Impact of a New War on Iraqi Children,” International Study Team, January 30, 2003, summary available at ; Klare quoted in Simons, “The Scourging of Iraq Part 1,” from Simons, The Scourging of Iraq. 24. Martti Ahtisaari, “Report to the Secretary-General on humanitarian needs in Kuwait and Iraq in the immediate post-crisis environment

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by a mission to the area led by Mr Martii Ahtisaari, Under-SecretaryGeneral for Administration and Management,” March 20, 1991, p. 5 . 25. Ibid., pp. 11–12. 26. Leon Eisenberg, “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters: Human Costs of Economic Sanctions” (editorial), New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 336, No. 17, April 24, 1997, pp. 1248 -1250 ; Milan Rai, War Plan Iraq: Ten Reasons Against War in Iraq, WW Norton & Company: New York, 2002, p. 138. 27. “World Report,” Human Rights Watch, 1992, pp. 707–8. 28. Steven Lee Myers, “Clinton is Sending 2nd Carrier to Gulf,” New York Times, November 15, 1997 ; Madeleine Albright (interviewed by Jim Lehrer), “Newshour with Jim Lehrer,” PBS, December 17, 1998 . 29. This and the following excerpts of Nuha al-Radi’s account of the sanctions were drawn from al-Radi, Baghdad Diaries: A Woman’s Chronicle of War and Exile. 30. “The Military Uses of DU,” BBC, January 9, 2001 ; Larry Johnson, “Iraqi Cancers, Birth Defects Blamed on US Depleted Uranium,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 12, 2002 . 31. Deborah Hastings, “Is an Armament Sickening US Soldiers?” Associated Press, August 12, 2006 ; “Summary record of the 482nd meeting: Iraq” (CRC/C/SR.482), UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, April 13, 1999 . 32. W. Kreisel, “Health Situation in Iraq,” WHO Office of the European Union, February 26, 2001 . 33. “Royal Australian Navy in the Persian Gulf,” Digger History . 34. “IV. Nutrition and Health,” in “Assessment of the Food and Nutrition Situation in Iraq,” FAO/WFP/WHO, 2000 . 35. Halliday quoted in “The Observer’s Nick Cohen Responds on Iraq,” Media Lens, March 15, 2002 . 36. Hans von Sponeck (letter to editor), Guardian, January 3, 2001 . 37. Thomas W. Smith, “The New Law of War: Legitimizing Hi-Tech and Infrastructural Violence,” in International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 3, September 2002, pp. 355–74; Matt Welch, “The Politics of Dead Children: Have Sanctions Against Iraq Murdered Millions?,” Reason, March 2002 . 38. Said quoted in Brinda Mehta, “Dissidence, Creativity, and Embargo Art in Nuha Al-Radi’s Baghdad Diaries,” Meridians, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2006, pp. 220–35 . 39. Ruhal Mahajan, “We Think the Price is Worth It,” FAIR: Extra!, November/December 2001 .

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40. Joel Brinkley, “Bush Urges End to Iraq Sanctions,” New York Times, April 17, 2003 . 41. Ahmed (interviewed by Michael Otterman and Tamara Fenjan), Amman, Jordan, February 1, 2008. 42. Jim Lobe, “Law Groups Say U.S. Invasion Illegal,” OneWorld.net, March 21, 2003 . 43. Graham Paterson, “Greenspan: Oil the Prime Motive for Iraq War,” The Sunday Times, September 16, 2007 ; O’Neill quoted in Dilip Hiro, “How the Bush Administration’s Iraqi Oil Grab Went Awry,” TomDispatch, September 25, 2007 . 44. Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith, “False Pretenses,” The Center for Public Integrity, January 23, 2008 . For further reading on Bush Administration lies in the lead-up to the war, see Norman Solomon, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, Wiley: New York, 2005; Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, Three Rivers Press: New York, 2006; and Greg Mitchell, So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits— and the President—Failed on Iraq,Union Square Press: New York, 2008. 45. Salam Pax, “A Post from Baghdad Station,” Where is Raed?, May 7, 2003 . 46. Peter Maass, “Salam Pax is Real,” Slate, June 2, 2003 . 47. Mohammed Fadil, “Obama’s Meddling Undermines Future US-Iraq Relationship,” Iraq the Model, October 15, 2008 . 48. Hammorabi, “The Iraqis Protesting Against the US Indefinite Occupation of Iraq,” Hammorabi, October 18, 2008 . 49. Connors and Bingham quoted in Fiaza al-Araji, Raed Jarrar, and Khalid Jarrar, The Iraq War Blog: An Iraqi Family’s Inside View of the First Year of the Occupation, Second Chance Publishing: Nashville, Tennessee, 2008, p. iv. 50. Salam Pax, “‘I became the profane pervert Arab blogger,’” Guardian, September 9, 2003 . 51. David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt, “US Has a Plan to Occupy Iraq, Officials Report,” New York Times, October 11, 2002 . 52. Salam Pax, Where is Raed?, 12 October 2002 . 53. Pax, “‘I became the profane pervert Arab blogger.’” 54. Al Barger, “An Open Letter to an Iraqi Citizen,” Culpepper Log, November 13, 2002 . 55. Salam Pax, Where is Raed?, December 5, 2002 .

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56. Salam Pax, “‘I became the profane pervert Arab blogger.’” 57. Craig S Smith, “Groups Outline Plans for Governing a Post-Hussein Iraq,” New York Times, December 18, 2002 ; Salam Pax, Where is Raed?, December 22, 2002 . 58. Salam Pax, Where is Raed?, January 14, 2003 . 59. Faiza al-Araji (interviewed by Maryam Roberts), “An Iraqi Woman’s Perspective,” Global Exchange, April 1, 2006 . 60. The following excerpts have been edited for space, but as with other blogger/diarist material, the grammar and spelling remain untouched. They are drawn from Faiza al-Araji’s A Family in Baghdad War Diary, available at , and Salam Pax’s Where is Raed?, available at . 61. Hassan, “Iraqi Bloggers: From Pax to Sanyora,” An Average Iraqi, October 31, 2005 . 62. Faiza al-Araji, A Family in Baghdad, November 16, 2006 . 63. Riverbend, “The Beginning,” Baghdad Burning, August 17, 2003 . 64. Riverbend (interviewed by Lakshmi Chaudhry), “The Girl Blogger From Iraq,” Alternet, April 20, 2005 . 65. Riverbend, “Two Years …,” Baghdad Burning, March 23, 2005 . 66. Riverbend, “Setting the Record Straight,” Baghdad Burning, August 22, 2003 . 67. Riverbend, “Atrocities…,” Baghdad Burning, July 11, 2006 . 68. Ibid. 69. Riverbend, “Lately…,” Baghdad Burning, September 12, 2003 .

Chapter 2   1. Fadila and Basel (interviewed by Richard Hil), Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, Australia, March 15, 2008.   2. Gil Loescher, “A Disaster Waiting to Happen,” Observer, February 2, 2003 ; Arthur C. Helton and Gil Loescher, “Internally Displaced Persons in Iraq: A Potential Crisis?,” openDemocracy, April 10, 2003 .   3. This and the following excerpts from Nuha al-Radi’s account as a refugee were drawn from Nuha al-Radi, Baghdad Diaries: A Woman’s Chronicle of War and Exile, Vintage: New York, Amazon Kindle Edition, 2007.

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  4. Sheko Mako, “A Nation Overwhelmed by Mass Exodus,” Sheko Mako in Iraq, March 11, 2007 .   5. Mohammed (interviewed by Richard Hil and Karim), Rinkeby, Sweden, July 5, 2008.   6. “Five Years On, More People Displaced Than Ever Before,” International Organization for Migration, March 18, 2008 .   7. “Likely Humanitarian Scenarios (Strictly Confidential),” United Nations, December 10, 2002 ; “Do Media Know That War Kills?,” FAIR, March 14, 2003 ; Gil Loescher, “A Disaster Waiting to Happen.”   8. Gil Loescher, “A Disaster Waiting to Happen.”   9. Joel R. Charny, “The United States in Iraq: An Experiment with Unilateral Humanitarianism,” Foreign Policy in Focus, June 26, 2003 . 10. Michael Schwartz, “Iraq’s Broken Pieces Don’t Fit Together,” Asia Times, February 13, 2008 . 11. Mike Marqusee, “A Name that Lives in Infamy,” Guardian, November 10, 2005 . 12. Allawi quoted in Schwartz, “Iraq’s Broken Pieces Don’t Fit Together.” 13. Mama, “Reasons Why Iraqis Leave Their Houses,” Emotions…, April 11, 2008 . 14. Mama, “Please God give us solace,” Emotions…, March 20, 2008 ; Mama, “Reasons Why Iraqis Leave Their Houses.” 15. “IRAQ: New Report Highlights Growing Number of IDPs,” IRIN, April 3, 2008 ; Khaled Yacoub Oweis, “Iraqi Refugees in Syria Reluctant to Return,” Reuters, February 12, 2009 ; “Statistics on Displaced Iraqis around the World,” UNHCR, September 2007 . 16. Laith (interviewed by Michael Otterman and Tamara Fenjan), Amman, Jordan, February 3, 2008. 17. Ma’aly Hazzaz and Ziad Ayad, “First Iraqi family departs Jordan for resettlement in Germany”, UNHCR, March 16, 2009 . 18. UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, Adopted on 28 July 1951 by the United Nations Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Status of Refugees and Stateless Persons . 19. Alexander G. Higgins, “UN: Most Iraqi refugees in program go to US,” Associated Press, October 16, 2009 . 20. Ahmed (interviewed by Michael Otterman and Tamara Fenjan), Amman, Jordan, February 1, 2008; “Escalating Violence in Iraq Prompts UN Aid Official to Call for Urgent Help from Leaders,” UN News Center, October 11, 2006 ; Clea Caulcutt, “Iraq’s Deadly Brain Drain,” France 24, May 11, 2008 .

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21. “Deaths Top 100 in Baghdad Bombings, Shooting,” CNN/VOV News, January 17, 2007 ; Clea Caulcutt, “Iraq’s Deadly Brain Drain,” France 24; Jaboury quoted in “IRAQ: The Exodus of Academics has Lowered Educational Standards,” IRIN, January 7, 2007 . 22. “IRAQ-JORDAN: New Rules a ‘Death Sentence’ for Iraqis,” IRIN, March 1, 2007 . 23. Dr. Mohammed, “The Jail,” Last of Iraqis, August 9, 2007 . 24. Dr. Mohammed, “Detained Again !!,” Last of Iraqis, February 12, 2008 . 25. Riverbend, “Leaving Home…,” Baghdad Burning, September 6, 2007 . 26. Thanassis Cambanis, “Syria Shuts Main Exit From War for Iraqis,” New York Times, October 21, 2007 . 27. Riverbend, “Bloggers Without Borders ….” 28. Miriam (interviewed by Michael Otterman and Tamara Fenjan), Jeramana, Damascus, Syria, January 31, 2008; Aisha (interviewed by Michael Otterman and Tamara Fenjan), Jeramana, Damascus, Syria, January 31, 2008. Please note: Portions of these interviews and background information first appeared in Mike Otterman and Tamara Fenjan, “Between Iraq and a Hard Place,” New Matilda, February 5, 2008 . 29. Kaezem (interviewed by Michael Otterman and Tamara Fenjan), Zaida Zeinab, Damascus, Syria, January 30, 2008; Iraqi man and his aunt (interviewed by Michael Otterman and Tamara Fenjan), Zaida Zeinab, Damascus, Syria, January 30, 2008. Please note: Portions of these interviews and background information first appeared in Otterman and Fenjan, “Between Iraq and a Hard Place.” 30. “UNHCR Syria Update,” UNHCR-Syria, May 2008, p. 4. 31. Jolles quoted in Khaled Yacoub Oweis, “Iraqi Refugees in Syria Reluctant to Return,” Reuters; Younes quoted in Lourdes GarciaNavarro, “The Past Complicates Iraq’s Efforts To Move On,” NPR, April 20, 2009 . 32. Rafed (interviewed by Michael Otterman and Tamara Fenjan), Jeramana, Damascus, Syria, January 31, 2008. 33. Zahirah (interviewed by Michael Otterman and Tamara Fenjan), Amman, Jordan, February 2, 2008. 34. “Statistics on Displaced Iraqis around the World,” UNHCR. 35. Fadila and Basel (interviewed by Richard Hil).

Chapter 3   1. Mark Curtis, “Unpeople: Author’s Introduction,” online excerpt from Mark Curtis, Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses, Vintage: London, 2004 .

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  2. Humphries quoted in Ted Galen Carpenter, The Captive Press: Foreign Policy Crises and the First Amendment, Cato Institute: Washington DC, 1995, p. 166.   3. Humphries quoted in John R. MacArthur, Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War, University of California Press: Berkeley, 1992, p. 139.   4. Carpenter, The Captive Press, p. 165.   5. Humphries quoted in MacArthur, Second Front, pp. 138–40.   6. Ibid.   7. Carpenter, The Captive Press, p. 167.   8. MacArthur, Second Front, pp. 141–2; Metcalf quoted in Carpenter, The Captive Press, p. 160.   9. Carpenter, The Captive Press, pp. 159, 169–70; MacArthur, Second Front, p. 142. 10. Carpenter, The Captive Press, p. 173. 11. Ibid., p. 175; MacArthur, Second Front, pp. 143–4. 12. Thomas B. Rosenstiel, “Senators Told of Press Curb Problems,” Los Angeles Times, February 21, 1991, p. 5A. 13. Cronkite and Cloud quoted in MacArthur, Second Front, pp. 155–6. 14. Carpenter, The Captive Press, p. 211; Gregg Easterbrook, “Operation Desert Shill: A Sober Look at What Was Not Achieved in the War,” New Republic, September 30, 1991. 15. Yant quoted in Carpenter, The Captive Press, p. 211. 16. Thomas B. Rosenstiel, “Americans Praise Media But Still Back Censorship, Postwar Poll Says,” Los Angeles Times, March 25, 1991, p. 9A. 17. Ibid. 18. “National Strategy for Combating Terrorism,” February 2003, p. 23 . 19. Scott Shuger, “Stop the Kabulsh*t,” Slate, February 13, 2002 . 20. Amitai Etzioni and Jason H. Marsh, Rights Vs. Public Safety after 9/11: America in the Age of Terrorism, Rowman & Littlefield: Lanham, Maryland, 2003, p. 73; “Afghan War Resurrects Tensions Between Journalists, US Military,” Agence France-Presse, October 7, 2002 ; Duncan Campbell, “US Buys Up All Satellite War Images,” Guardian, October 17, 2001 . 21. Rodgers quoted in Edward S. Herman, “Tragic Errors in US Military Policy: Targeting the Civilian Population,” Z Magazine, September 2002 ; Struck quoted in “Afghan War Resurrects Tensions Between Journalists, US Military,” Agence FrancePresse; Matthew Pennington, “US Military: Censorship Was Justified,” Associated Press, March 10, 2007 . 22. Al-Ali quoted in “Al-Jazeera Kabul Offices Hit in US Raid,” BBC, 13 November 2001 ; Matt Wells, “How

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Smart Was This Bomb?” Guardian, November 19, 2001 . 23. Golden quoted in Russ Kick, “Senior CNN Executive Admits News Media Distorted Afghanistan War,” The Memory Hole ; Kurt Nimmo, “The Lapdog Conversion of CNN,” Counterpunch, August 23, 2002 . 24. Shahira Fahmy, “Framing Visual News: The 9/11 Attacks and the War in Afghanistan in English and Arabic Newspapers,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, New Orleans, May 2004, p. 15. . 25. Fleischer quoted in Glen Greenwald, “Ari Fleischer on ‘the grid in front of’ the President,” Salon, February 11, 2009 ; Josh Marshall, “So there you have it,” Talking Points Memo, 21 March 2006 ; “O’Reilly, Others Smear Veteran Journalist Helen Thomas Over Exchange with Bush,” Media Matters for America, March 27, 2006 . 26. Helen Thomas (interviewed by Andrew Denton), “Enough Rope with Andrew Denton,” ABC, July 7, 2008 . 27. Glenn Greenwald, “Scott McClellan on the ‘liberal media,’” Salon, May 28, 2008 . 28. Yellin quoted in Glenn Greenwald, “CNN/MSNBC reporter: Corporate executives forced pro-Bush, pro-war narrative,” Salon, May 29, 2008 . 29. Steve Benen, “Couric faced ‘corporate pressue,’” Crooks and Liars, September 27, 2007 ; Greenwald, “CNN/ MSNBC reporter: Corporate executives forced pro-Bush, pro-war narrative”; Rick Ellis, “Ashley Banfield: ‘Don’t Shoot The Messenger,’” All Your TV, April 28, 2003 . 30. “Do Media Know That War Kills?,” FAIR, March 14, 2003 . 31. Ibid. 32. Jonathan Alter, “In Bed With the Pentagon,” Newsweek, March 10, 2003 ; David Miller, “Eliminating Truth: The Development of War Propaganda,” Media Lens . 33. Andrew M. Lindner, “Controlling the Media in Iraq,” Contexts, Spring 2008 . 34. Ibid. 35. Wright quoted in Michael Massing, “Iraq: The Hidden Human Costs,” New York Review of Books, vol. 54, no. 20, December 20, 2007 . 36. Ibid. 37. “In Pictures: Shooting in Tal Afar,” BBC ; Hondros quoted in Barbara Bedway, “Why Few Graphic Images from Iraq Make it to US Papers,” Editor & Publisher, July 18, 2005 .

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38. William Branigin, “A Gruesome Scene on Highway 9,” Washington Post, April 1, 2003 ; “Official Story Vs. Eyewitness Account,” FAIR, April 4, 2003 . 39. Cahal Milmo, “The Proof: Marketplace Deaths Were Caused by a US Missile,” Independent, April 2, 2003 . 40. “Media Should Follow Up on Civilian Deaths,” FAIR, April 4, 2003 . 41. Michael Kamber and Tim Arango, “4,000 US Deaths, and a Handful of Images,” New York Times, July 26, 2008 ; Lyon and Saman quoted in Bedway, “Why Few Graphic Images from Iraq Make it to US Papers.” 42. Elisabeth Bumiller, “Pentagon to Allow Photos of Soldiers’ Coffins,” New York Times, February 26, 2009 ; Associated Press, “Media, Pentagon Spar Over Control of Information,” Editor & Publisher, February 6, 2009 ; Amanda Terkel, “Military Kicks Out Embedded Blogger For Photographing Marine Killed In A Suicide Bombing In Iraq,” Think Progress, July 7, 2008 ; Zoriah Miller (interviewed by Amy Goodman), Democracy Now!, July 14, 2008 . 43. Glenn Greenwald, “How the military analyst program controlled news coverage: in the Pentagon’s own words,” Salon, May 10, 2008 . 44. “Military analysts named in Times exposé appeared or were quoted more than 4,500 times on broadcast nets, cables, NPR,” Media Matters for America, May 13, 2008 ; Diane Farsetta, “Pentagon Rejects Its Own Pundit Program Whitewash,” Center for Media and Democracy, May 6, 2009 . 45. Conway quoted in Associated Press, “Media, Pentagon Spar Over Control of Information”; Hastings quoted in Chris Tomlinson, “AP Impact: Pentagon boosts spending on PR,” Associated Press, February 5, 2009 . 46. Carl Conetta, “Disappearing the Dead: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Idea of a ‘New Warfare,’” Project on Defense Alternatives, Research Monograph no. 9, February 18, 2004, p. 15 . 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid., p. 16. 49. Ibid., p. 17. 50. Ibid., p. 20. 51. “Off Target: The Conduct of the War and Civilian Casualties in Iraq,” Human Rights Watch, 2003, p. 6 . 52. “The Weapons That Kill Civilians—Deaths of Children and Noncombatants in Iraq, 2003–2008” (press release), Iraq Body Count,

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April 16, 2009 ; Conetta, “Disappearing the Dead,” pp. 23, 25. 53. Garlasco quoted in Mark Benjamin, “When is an Accidental Civilian Death not an Accident?,” Salon, July 30, 2007 ; Michael Gordon, “US Air Raids in ’02 Prepared for War in Iraq”, New York Times, July 20, 2003 . 54. Thorp quoted in Conetta, “Disappearing the Dead,” pp. 41, 43. 55. Ibid., pp. 20–21, 33, 50, 3. 56. Julian Assange, “Classified U.S report into the Fallujah assult,” WikiLeaks, December 25, 2007 ; “Complex Environments: Battle of Falluja I, April 2004” (NGIC Assessment), US Army National Ground Intelligence Center, p. 14 . 57. Hughes quoted in Dahr Jamail, Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq, Haymarket: New York, 2007, pp. 131–2. 58. Mark Kimmit and Dan Senor (press briefing), Department of Defense, April 1, 2004 59. “Complex Environments: Battle of Falluja I, April 2004”, pp. 4, 13, 7. 60. “No Longer Unknowable: Falluja’s April Civilian Toll is 600” (press release), Iraq Body Count, October 26, 2006 ; “Operation Vigilant Resolve”, GlobalSecurity.org . 61. “Complex Environments: Battle of Falluja I, April 2004,” pp 13–14. 62. Ahmed Mansur and Laith Mushtaq (interviewed by Amy Goodman), Democracy Now!, February 22, 2006 . 63. “Iraqi media professionals killed in Iraq under US-Occupation,” Brussels Tribunal, August 6, 2008 ; “Is Killing Part of Pentagon Press Policy,” FAIR, April 10, 2003 ; Adrienne Kinne (interviewed by Amy Goodman), Democracy Now!, May 13, 2008 . 64. Mansur and Mushtaq (interviewed by Amy Goodman), Democracy Now! 65. “CNN to Al Jazeera: Why Report Civilian Deaths?,” FAIR, April 15, 2004 . 66. Jeremy Scahill, “Did Bush Really Want to Bomb Al Jazeera?”, Nation, November 23, 2005 . 67. Kevin Maguire and Andy Lines, “Exclusive: Bush Plot to Bomb his Arab Ally,” Daily Mirror, November 22, 2005 . 68. “CNN to Al Jazeera: Why Report Civilian Deaths?,” FAIR. 69. Dahr Jamail, Beyond the Green Zone, pp. 131–2, 138–9. 70. Jo Wilding, “Thawra,” wildfirejo, April 30, 2004 .

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71. For fuller accounts of the brutal second siege of Falluja, an operation deemed by the US military to be more “successful” than the April assault, see Noam Chomsky, “Returning to the Scene of the Crime,” TomDispatch, April 4, 2006 ; Michael Shwartz, “Falluja: City Without a Future?,” TomDispatch, January 14, 2005 ; John Plunkett, “Western Journalists Quit Falluja,” Guardian, November 9, 2004 ; Mahmood Mamdani (interviewed by Amy Goodman), Democracy Now!, November 18, 2004 ; and “Media Coverage Fails on Iraq: Fallujah and the Civilian Deathtoll,” Project Censored, 2006 . 72. Rahul Mahajan, “Fallujah and the Reality of War,” Counterpunch, November 6, 2004 . 73. Rahul Mahajan, Empire Notes, 18 April, 2004 . 74. Mansur and Mushtaq (interviewed by Amy Goodman), Democracy Now! 75. “Complex Environments: Battle of Falluja I, April 2004,” p. 14. 76. Eric Niiler (interviewed by Michele Norris), “All Things Considered,” NPR, April 5, 2004. 77. “Complex Environments: Battle of Falluja I, April 2004,” p. 14; Niiler (interviewed by Norris), “All Things Considered.”

Chapter 4   1. “Bush’s UN speech” (transcript), BBC, September 13, 2002 .   2. Geneva Convention I for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field, Geneva, August 12, 1949 .   3. Appy quoted in Tom Engelhardt, “Tomgram: Mike Davis on Bombshell Art,” TomDispatch, September 18, 2003 .   4. Charles Mohr, “US Acts to Curb Civilian Casualties in Vietnam,” New York Times, August 17, 1966.   5. Ibid.   6. Neil Sheehan, “Vietnam Peasants Are Victims of War,” New York Times, February 15, 1966.   7. In 1967, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) independently released fragmentary hospital civilian casualty data in a move that angered the Johnson White House. See Jonathan Randal, “Toll of Civilians Rising in Vietnam,” New York Times, April 21, 1967; and Neil Sheehan, “Kennedy Puts Vietnam Civilian Dead at 25,000 in 1970,” New York Times, March 15, 1971.

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  8. Neil Sheehan, “Edward Kennedy Finds Vietnam Toll of Civilians High,” New York Times, May 8, 1967; Sheehan, “Kennedy Puts Vietnam Civilian Dead at 25,000 in 1970”; Neil Sheehan, “Kennedy Group Reports A Big Civilian War Toll,” New York Times, May 25, 1972; Anthony Lewis, “The Death of the Heart,” New York Times, February 7, 1974.   9. Tad Szulc, “Aide Says Pentagon Does Not Receive Reports on Civilian Damage in North,” New York Times, October 9, 1972. 10. “The Situation in Grenada” (38/7), United Nations, November 2, 1983 ; B. Drummond Ayres Jr., “US Concedes Bombing Hospital in Grenada, Killing at least 12,” New York Times, November 1, 1983. 11. Phillip Bennett and Walter V. Robinson, “US Steps Up Drive to Gain Control of Noriega,” Boston Globe, December 26, 1989; UPI, “US Lowers Estimate of Civilian Casualties to 202, Plans to Release 100 POWs,” Los Angeles Times, January 13, 1990; Clark quoted in “US ‘Hiding Real Toll’ in Panama,” Advertiser, January 8, 1990; Larry Rohter, “Panama and US Strive to Settle on Death Toll,” New York Times, April 1, 1990; Douglas Jehl, “Panama’s Civilian Toll Put Too Low, Investigators Say,” Los Angeles Times, March 15, 1990; Douglas Jehl, “Panama’s Troop Toll Cut: 314 to 50,” Los Angeles Times, March 27, 1990. 12. John H. Cushman, “Pentagon Seems Vague on the Iraqis’ Death Toll,” New York Times, February 3, 1991; Holly Burkhalter, “Some Bodies Don’t Count” (op-ed), Los Angeles Times, March 12, 1991. 13. Times Staff Writers, “Raid Kills Hundreds, Iraq Says,” Los Angeles Times, February 14, 1991; “Needless Deaths in the Gulf War: Civilian Casualties During the Air Campaign and Violations of the Laws of War,” Human Rights Watch, 1991 ; Associated Press, “Fitzwater’s Remarks: ‘Loss of Civilian Lives is Truly Tragic,’” Los Angeles Times, February 14, 1991. 14. Cushman, “Pentagon Seems Vague on the Iraqis’ Death Toll.” 15. James Gerstenzang and Norman Kempster, “Bush Assails Iraqi ‘Myths and Falsehoods,’” Los Angeles Times, February 13, 1991; Barton Gellman, “Census Worker Who Calculated ’91 Iraqi Death Toll Is Told She Will Be Fired,” Washington Post, March 6, 1992. 16. Jack Kelly, “Estimates of Deaths in First War Still in Dispute,” Post-Gazette, February 16, 2003 . 17. Gellman, “Census Worker Who Calculated ’91 Iraqi Death Toll Is Told She Will Be Fired”; Paul Magnusson, “Toting the Casualties of War,” Business Week, February 6, 2003 . 18. Edward Epstein, “Success in Afghan War Hard to Gauge,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 23, 2002 . 19. For an overview of Afghan civilian death counts, see “Afghanistan: Civilian Deaths from Airstrikes,” Human Rights Watch, September 7, 2008 ; Jonathan Steele, “Forgotten Victims,” Guardian, May 20, 2002 ; and

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Eliza Szabo, “Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan: Fatal Neglect,” Counterpunch, July 20, 2007 . 20. Donald Rumsfeld (interviewed by Tony Snow), Fox News, November 2, 2003 ; “Hearts and Minds; Statistical Analysis of Civilian Dead,” Human Rights Watch, October 2003 . 21. These figures—obtained on December 15, 2009—change frequently as more research is conducted. For further caveats to the data, see “Documented Civilian Deaths from Violence: Monthly Table,” Iraq Body Count . 22. “A Dossier of Civilian Casualties: 2003-2005, The Killers: Fact Sheet 2,” Iraq Body Count, July 2005, p. 13 ; Jomana Karadsheh, “Study: War Blamed for 655,000 Iraqi Deaths,” CNN, October 11, 2006 ; Stephen Pollard, “How Not to Count Bodies,” The Times (London), July 21, 2005 . 23. “Iraq Body Count Refuses to Respond,” Media Lens, March 14, 2006 . 24. “Paved with Good Intentions–Iraq Body Count–Part 2,” Media Lens, January 26, 2006 . 25. Stephen Soldz, “When Promoting the Truth Obscures the Truth,” Zmag, February 5, 2006 . 26. “Sources Used by Iraq Body Count,” Iraq Body Count, August 31, 2007 ; “Paved With Good Intentions–Iraq Body Count–Part 1,” Media Lens, January 25, 2006 . 27. Raed Jarrar, “A Note From the Director of the Survey,” Iraqi Civilian War Casualties ; Niko Price, “AP Tallies 3240 Civilian Deaths in Iraq,” Associated Press, June 10, 2003 ; Carl Conetta, “The Wages of War: Iraqi Combatant and Noncombatant Fatalities in the 2003 Conflict,” Project on Defense Alternatives, Research Monograph no. 8, October 20, 2003 . 28. Neil Graves, “Casualties of War Kept at Minimum,” New York Post, March 19, 2004, p. 20. 29. Gilbert Burnham, Riyadh Lafta, Shannon Doocy, and Les Roberts, “Mortality After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: A Cross-Sectional Cluster Sample Survey,” Lancet, vol. 368, October 21, 2006, p. 1426; Patrick Ball, Paul Kobrak, and Herbert F Spirer, “State Violence in Guatemala, 1960-1996: A Quantative Reflection” , cited in Patrick McElwee and Robert Naiman, “Is the US Responsible for a Million Iraqi Deaths?,” Just Foreign Policy, September 11, 2007 . 30. In 2003, up to 1700 tons of DU were again deployed by US and UK troops. See “Iraq: The DU Dust Settles,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, April 2, 2004 .

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31. “Mortality Study, Eastern D.R. Congo (April–May 2000),” International Rescue Committee, 2000 . 32. “Suffering and Despair: Humanitarian Crisis in the Congo,” Hearing before the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, 107th Congress, 1st Session, May 17, 2001 ; Lila Guterman, “Lost Count,” Chronicle of Higher Education, February 4, 2005 . 33. The website—http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/congo/index. html—was active until late 2008. 34. “Glimmerings of a Congo Peace” (editorial), New York Times, March 5, 2001 ; Les Roberts, “Quotation of the Day,” New York Times, June 9, 2000, p. 1A; Didi Schanche, “War Deaths on ‘Horrifying’ Rise, IRC Says,” Washington Times, May 10, 2001. 35. Les Roberts, Riyadh Lafta, Richard Garfield, Jamal Khudhairi, and Gilbert Burnham, “Mortality Before and After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: Cluster Sample Survey,” Lancet, vol. 364, pp. 1857–64. 36. Les Roberts, et al., “Mortality Before and After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: Cluster Sample Survey.” 37. Edward Ericson Jr., “100,000: A Controversial Report From Johns Hopkins Researchers Estimate Iraq Civilian Death Toll,” Baltimore City Paper, November 17, 2004 ; “The Lancet’s Politics” (editorial), Washington Times, June 23, 2005, p. A20. 38. Hassan M Fattah, “Civilian Toll is Placed at Nearly 25,000,” New York Times, July 20, 2005 ; “IBC Response to the Lancet Study Estimating ‘100,000’ Iraqi Deaths” (press release), Iraq Body Count, November 7, 2004 . 39. “IBC Response to the Lancet Study Estimating ‘100,000’ Iraqi Deaths” (press release); Elisabeth Rosenthal, “Study Puts Iraqi Deaths of Civilians at 100,000,” New York Times, October 29, 2004 . 40. Lila Guterman, “Dead Iraqis: Why An Estimate Was Ignored,” Columbia Journalism Review, March/April 2005 ; Fred Kaplan, “100,000 Dead–or 8000?,” Slate, October 29, 2004 . 41. Patrick Wintour and Richard Norton-Taylor, “No 10 Challenges Civilian Death Toll,” Guardian, October 30, 2004 ; Klim McPherson, “Counting the Dead in Iraq” (editorial), British Medical Journal, vol. 330, March 12, 2005, pp. 550–1; Klim McPherson, et al., “Global Public Health Experts Say Failure to Count Iraqi Casualties is Irresponsible” (open letter), March 11, 2005 . 42. Wintour and Norton-Taylor, “No 10 Challenges Civilian Death Toll”; John Leo, “Misleading Public on Civilian Deaths” (editorial), San Diego Union-Tribune, March 24, 2003, p. B6; John Leo, “Fun With Numbers,” US News and World Reports, vol. 139, no. 4, August

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1, 2005, p. 62; “Iraq Body Count–A Shame Becoming Shameful,” Media Lens, April 10, 2006 ; Sarah Sewall (interviewed by Neal Conan), “Talk of the Nation,” NPR, January 10, 2008 . 43. “Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience,” Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, January 22, 2009, pp. 65, 135, 162, 226, 294, 319 ; Les Roberts (interviewed by Amy Goodman), Democracy Now!, December 14, 2005 ; Oren Dorell, “Bush Puts Deaths of Iraqis at 30,000,” USA Today, December 12, 2005 . 44. For discussion on the various methodologies used in these studies, see “Other Mortality Estimates,” Iraq Analysis, 2007 ; and Iraq Family Health Survey Study Group, “ViolenceRelated Mortality in Iraq from 2002–2006,” New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 358, no. 5, January 31, 2008, pp. 484–93. 45. Gilbert Burnham, et al., “Mortality After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq,” pp. 1421–9. 46. Diane Farsetta, “Jousting with the Lancet: More Data, More Debate Over Iraqi Deaths,” Center for Media and Democracy, February 26, 2008 ; “Calculating Casualties: The Human Cost of War in Iraq,” The Economist, October 14, 2006; “Political Science” (editorial), Washington Times, October 12, 2006, p. A20. 47. Neil Munro and Carl M. Cannon, “Data Bomb,” National Journal, January 4, 2008 ; “All Smoke, No Fire– The National Journal Smears the Lancet,” Media Lens, January 22, 2008 . 48. Karadsheh, “Study: War Blamed for 655,000 Iraqi Deaths”; Associated Press, “Iraq Death Toll Survey ‘Robust,’” Australian, March 27, 2007 ; “Beckett Comments on Lancet Iraq Report,” UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, October 11, 2006 ; George W. Bush (press conference), White House Rose Garden, October 11, 2006 . 49. Les Roberts (interviewed by Mathew Chavez), New Mexico Daily Lobo, January 30, 2008 . 50. Owen Bennett-Jones, “Iraqi Deaths Survey ‘Was Robust,’” BBC, March 26, 2007 ; “The Iraq Deaths Study was Valid and Correct” (open letter), The Age, October 21, 2006 . 51. “Kucinich-Paul Congressional Hearing on Civilian Casualties in Iraq,” Rayburn House Office Building, Washington DC, December 11, 2006 . 52. David Shelby, “Pentagon Report Sees Progress in Iraq,” USINFO/US Department of State, December 19, 2006 .

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53. Please note: To attain the 44,000 casualty figure, one must first calculate casualties per period, then add each period together to find the total. To do so, first count the number of days within each time period. For example, the “Pre-Sovereignty” period from April 1–June 28, 2004, includes 89 days. Next, multiply this figure with the corresponding value on the graph’s x-axis. During the “Pre-Sovereignty” period there were roughly six casualties per day, thus during this period a total of 534 civilian casualties (89 x 6) were recorded by the Pentagon. See “Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq,” Department of Defense, November 30, 2006, pp. 21, 22 . 54. “Adding Indifference to Injury: Three Times as Many Injuries as Deaths Have Been Reported,” Iraq Body Count, August 2003 ; Michael Dobbs, “Counting Civilian Deaths in Iraq,” Washington Post, October 1, 2007 . 55. Dana Blanton, “FOX News Poll: Most Think Troop Surge is Bush’s Last Chance in Iraq,” Fox News, January 18, 2007 ; “Charts to Accompany the Testimony of Gen David H. Petraeus,” Multi-National Force–Iraq, September 10–11, 2007, p. 3 ; Steven A. Boylan, “Statement to the Fact Checker,” Washington Post, September 22, 2007 ; Michael Dobbs, “Iraqi Civilian Deaths, Part II,” Washington Post, October 19, 2007 . 56. “More than 1,000,000 Iraqis murdered” (press release), Opinion Research Business, September 2007 . 57. “Kucinich: New Study Shows 1.2 Million Iraqi Civilians Died In War; Resolution Will Ask House To Investigate, Prefer Criminal Charges If Necessary” (press release), kucinich.us, September 2007 ; Leila Fadel, “Iraqi Death Toll: Number’s Elusive, But People’s Fears are Inescapable,” The Sacramento Bee, September 23, 2007; Ted Diadiun, “Printing Poll on Iraqi Deaths Would Be Irresponsible,” The Plain Dealer, September 23, 2007; Farsetta, “Jousting with the Lancet.” 58. An overview of the thirteen separate counts is discussed in Christine Tapp, et al., “Iraq War Mortality Estimates: A Systematic Review,” Conflict and Health, vol. 2, no. 1, March 7, 2008 . 59. “Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq,” Department of Defense, July 24, 2009, p. 24 .

Chapter 5   1. Shelma and Assem quoted in Leonard Doyle, “Vulnerable But Ignored: How Catastrophe Threatens the 12 Million Children of Iraq,” Independent, February 12, 2003 .

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  2. UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by General Assembly resolution 44/25 of 20 November, 1989 .   3. Matt Welch, “The Politics of Dead Children,” Reason, March 2002 ; “Survey on Iraqi Children Launched,” International Rescue Committee, June 1, 2003 .   4. “Little Respite for Iraq’s Children in 2007,” UNICEF, December 21, 2007 .   5. Riverbend (interviewed by Buzzflash), “Riverbend Is a Blogger, ‘Embedded’ in the Real Baghdad, Telling It Like It Is, Helping Us See With New Eyes,” Buzzflash, April 15, 2005 .   6. Sunshine, “introduction,” Days of My Life, April 20, 2005 . Please note: Sunshine’s mother blogs from Mosul using the name Mama. Her blog, Emotions..., was referenced in Chapter 2 and is available at .   7. Sunshine, “It couldn’t happen to you ...........,” Days of My Life, December 8, 2006 .   8. Sunshine, “Bad day in my memory,” Days of My Life, May 10, 2005 .   9. Sunshine, “Um Al-Rabeeain operation..,” Days of My Life, May 24, 2008 . 10. John Tirman, “Iraq’s Shocking Human Toll: About 1 Million Killed, 4.5 Million Displaced, 1–2 Million Widows, 5 Million Orphans,” Nation, February 2, 2009 ; Veneman quoted in Suleiman Khalidi, “Plight of Iraqi Children Raises Concern,” AlertNet, May 21, 2007 . 11. Lesley Abdela, “Iraq’s War on Women,” openDemocracy, July 17, 2005 ; UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly . 12. Sawsan quoted in Arwa Damon, “Violations of ‘Islamic Teachings’ Take Deadly Toll on Iraqi Women,” CNN, February 8, 2008 ; “Climate of Fear: Sexual Violence and Abduction of Women and Girls in Baghdad,” Human Rights Watch, vol. 15, no. 7 (E), July 2003, p. 3 ; Sudarsan Raghavan, “Iraqi Women, Fighting for a Voice,” Washington Post, December 7, 2008 . 13. “IRAQ: Acid Attacks on ‘Immodest’ Women on the Rise,” IRIN, July 4, 2005 . 14. Um Ali quoted in Dahr Jamail, “Iraqi Women More Oppressed Than Ever,” IPS, March 7, 2008 ; Safana quoted in Arwa Damon, “Violations of ‘Islamic Teachings’ Take Deadly Toll on Iraqi Women.” 15. Damon, “Violations of ‘Islamic Teachings’ Take Deadly Toll on Iraqi Women”; “World Report,” Human Rights Watch, 2009, p.

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469 ; Saud quoted in Raghavan, “Iraqi Women, Fighting for a Voice.” 16. Ali and Muzidin quoted in Ruth Rosen, “The Hidden War on Women in Iraq,” TomDispatch, July 13, 2006 ; Alissa J. Rubin and Sam Dagher, “Lack of Government Seats for Women Stokes Anger in Iraq,” New York Times, January 4, 2009 ; Saud quoted in Raghavan, “Iraqi Women, Fighting for a Voice.” 17. “Stronger Women, Stronger Nations: 2008 Iraq Report,” Women for Women International, March 3, 2008 ; “In Her Own Words: Iraqi Women Talk about their Greatest Concerns and Challenges,” Oxfam International, March 2009, pp. 2–3 . 18. Neurotica, “The Silently Grieving Black Veils...,” Neurotic Iraqi Wife, February 9, 2008 . 19. Hili quoted in Cara Buckley, “Gays Living in Shadows of New Iraq,” New York Times, December 18, 2007 . 20. Hili quoted in Doug Ireland, “Shia Death Squads Target Iraqi Gays,” Gay City News, March 23, 2006 ; “IRAQ: Male Homosexuality Still a Taboo,” IRIN, February 5, 2006 ; Peter Tatchell, “Sexual Cleansing in Iraq,” Guardian, September 25, 2008 . 21. “IRAQ: Male Homosexuality Still a Taboo,” IRIN. 22. Peter Tatchell, “Sistani Removes ‘Death to Gays’ Fatwa,” petertatchell. net, May 15, 2006 ; Tahseen quoted in Doug Ireland, “Shia Death Squads Target Iraqi Gays”; Olivia Ward, “Why 2009 will be even tougher than 2008,” Toronto Star, February 22, 2009 . 23. Ireland, “Shia Death Squads Target Iraqi Gays.” 24. Tatchell, “Sexual cleansing in Iraq.” 25. Molly Hennessy-Fiske, “Since Invasion, Gays in Iraq Lead Lives of Constant Fear,” Los Angeles Times, August 5, 2007 ; “Human Rights Report: 1 November–31 December 2006,” UNAMI, p. 26 ; Associated Press, “The New Iraqi Regime Slams UN Report on Casualties,” Iraqi LGBT, January 18, 2007 . 26. “Two Members of US Congress Protest Persecution of Gay Iraqis,” UKGayNews, June 14, 2007 ; Peter Tatchell, “Sexual cleansing in Iraq,” Iraqi LGBT, September 25, 2008 . 27. James Sanders, “Iraqi Man Faces Deportation Death,” PinkPaper, February 4, 2009 ; Timothy Williams and Tareq Maher, “Iraq’s Newly Open Gays Face Scorn and Murder,” New York Times, April 7, 2009 ; Mohammad quoted in Katherine Ganly, “Iraq: Organised ‘crackdown’ on homosexuals,” Global Voices, May 10, 2009 ; Hili quoted in Doug Ireland, “New Iraqi Gay Slays Bared,” Gay City News, July 19, 2007 . 28. Preti Taneja, “Assimilation, Exodus, Eradication: Iraq’s Minority Communities Since 2003,” Minority Rights Group International, 2007, p. 9 . 29. Maria Mackay, “Iraq’s Christian Population Halved Since 2003,” Christian Today, August 8, 2006 ; “Kidnappers of Mosul Bishop Raise the Ransom,” AsiaNews, March 4, 2008 ; Erica Goode, “Kidnapped Iraqi Archbishop is Dead,” New York Times, March 14, 2008 ; “Despite Being Left at the Mercy of Terrorists, Christians Continue to Hope, Says Bishop of Mosul,” AsiaNews, November 26, 2007 . 30. Sattar quoted in Angus Crawford, “Iraq’s Mandaeans ‘Face Extinction,’” BBC, March 4, 2007 . 31. Dinnayi quoted in Justin Huggler, “Hell’s Angels,” Independent, November 29, 2003, cited in Taneja, “Assimilation, Exodus, Eradication: Iraq’s Minority Communities Since 2003,” p. 13; Damien Cave and James Glanz, “Toll in Iraq Bombing is Raised to More Than 500,” New York Times, August 22, 2007 ; Hamu quoted in Stephen Farrell and Alissa J. Rubin, “Under Tight Security, Iraqis Vote on Almost Violence-Free Election Day,” New York Times, February 1, 2009 . 32. Al-Qaddo quoted in Taneja, “Assimilation, Exodus, Eradication: Iraq’s Minority Communities Since 2003,” p. 19. 33. “IRAQ: Hear Our Voices – ‘From this house I will leave just in a coffin,’” IRIN, October 25, 2006 . 34. “Iraq: Human Rights Abuses Against Palestinian Refugees,” Amnesty International, October 2007 . 35. “UNHCR Syria Update,” UNHCR-Syria, February 2009, pp. 9–10; Selwa and Jamal quoted in “IRAQ-SYRIA: Slow resettlement for Palestinian-Iraqi refugees,” IRIN, January 18, 2009 . 36. Jeff Spurr, “Iraqi Libraries and Archives in Peril: Survival in a Time of Invasion, Chaos, and Civil Conflict; Invasion, Dereliction, and Looting,” IraqCrisis/Middle East Librarians Association ; Hughes quoted in Charles H. Ferguson, No End in Sight: Iraq’s Descent into Chaos, Public Affairs: New York, 2008, p. 109. 37. UN Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict with Regulations for the Execution of the Convention 1954 . 38. Spurr, “Iraqi Libraries and Archives in Peril”; Jorgen Wadum, “ICOM-CC Appalled by Looting in Iraq,” April 14, 2003 . 39. Spurr, “Iraqi Libraries and Archives in Peril”; Armitage and Moulton quoted in Ferguson, No End in Sight, pp. 128, 114–5.

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40. Trofimov quoted in Ferguson, No End in Sight, p. 110; Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers (press briefing), Department of Defense, April 11, 2003 . 41. R. H. Lossin, “Iraq’s Ruined Library Soldiers On,” Nation, April 9, 2008 . 42. Sandy English, “Iraq’s Libraries: What Recovery from ‘A National Disaster Beyond Imagination?’” World Socialist Web Site, September 17, 2005 ; Baez quoted in Humberto Marquez, “Iraq Invasion the ‘Biggest Cultural Disaster Since 1258,’” Antiwar.com, February 16, 2005 . 43. Saad Eskander, “The Tale of Iraq’s ‘Cemetery of Books’” (transcript), Keynote speech at the 2004 Internet Librarian International conference, London, 10–12 October 2004 . 44. Ibid. 45. Robert Fisk, “Library Books, Letters and Priceless Documents are Set Ablaze in Final Chapter of the Sacking of Baghdad,” Independent, April 15, 2003 . 46. Ibid. 47. Eskander, “The Tale of Iraq’s ‘Cemetery of Books’” (transcript). 48. Ibid. 49. Ibid. 50. Saad Eskander, Saad Eskander’s Iraq diary, November 13, 2006 . 51. Ibid., November 20, 2006 . 52. Ibid., Diary for the Week 1–15 Dec 2006 ; Ibid., Diary for the Week 23–28 Dec 2006 . 53. Ibid., Diary for the Period 7–13 January 2007 ; Ibid., Diary for the Period 1–14 February 2007 . 54. Ibid., Diary for the Period 1–14 February 2007. 55. Ibid., Monday, 5 March 2007 . 56. Ibid., Tuesday, 3 April 2007 . 57. Ibid., 31 July 2007 . 58. Eskander quoted in Sudarsan Raghavan, “An Archive of Despair,” Washington Post, April 7, 2007 . 59. Hugh Eakin, “The Devastation of Iraq’s Past,” New York Review of Books, vol. 55 no. 13, August 14, 2008 . 60. Paul Martin, Ed Vulliamy and Gaby Hinsliff, “US Army was Told to Protect Looted Museum,” Observer, April 20, 2003 ; Sullivan quoted in Susan Breitkopf, “Lost: The Looting of Iraq’s Antiquities,” Museum News, January/February 2007 . 61. Donny George Youkhanna (interview), Executive Intelligence Review, vol. 30, no. 29, July 25, 2003 ; McGuire Gibson, “Diary,” London Review of Books, January 1, 2009 .

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62. Youkhanna (interview), Executive Intelligence Review. 63. Ibid. 64. Roger Cohen, “The Ghost in the Baghdad Museum,” New York Times, April 2, 2006 ; Youkhanna (interview), Executive Intelligence Review. 65. Allbritton and Bodine quoted in Ferguson, No End in Sight, pp. 111, 117–8. 66. Donald Rumsfeld (interviewed by Wolf Blitzer), “CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer,” CNN, February 6, 2005 ; Donny George Youkhanna (interviewed by Andrew Lawler), “Discover Interview: Director of Iraq’s National Museum,” Discover, August 3, 2007 . 67. Roger Cohen, “The Ghost in the Baghdad Museum.”; Youkhanna (interviewed by Lawler), “Discover Interview.” 68. Youkhanna (interviewed by Lawler), “Discover Interview.” 69. Youkhanna quoted in Steven Lee Myers, “Iraq Museum Reopens Six Years After Looting,” New York Times, February 23, 2009 . 70. Eakin, “The Devastation of Iraq’s Past”; Gibson, “Diary.” 71. Neil Brodie, “The Market in Iraqi Antiquities 1980–2008,” Stanford University Archaeology Center, October 2008 ; Youkhanna (interview), Executive Intelligence Review. 72. Keith Doubt, Understanding Evil: Lessons from Bosnia, Fordam University Press: New York, 2006, pp. 120, 126–7. 73 Ibid.; Keith Doubt and Jeff Boucher, “War in Iraq: Is it Sociocide?” Wittenberg University (unpublished paper emailed to authors).

Postscript   1. “Generic Invader Nonsense–Obama on Iraq,” Media Lens, March 5, 2009 .   2. David Montero and Nancy Mitchell, “Obama: Students Should Serve,” Rocky Mountain News, July 3, 2008 .   3. Harold Pinter, “Nobel Lecture: Art, Truth & Politics” (transcript), Nobelprize.org, 2005 .   4. “War Crimes Committed by the United States in Iraq and Mechanisms for Accountability,” Consumers for Peace with the advice of Karen Parker, October 10, 2006 .   5. Blue Texan, “Cheney Calls Iraq ‘Significant Success, Masterfully Done’; Blames Lengthy, Bloody Occupation On Lack Of Iraqi ‘Get Up And Go,’” firedoglake, January 4, 2009 ; Al-Jibury quoted in Dilip Hero, “How the Bush Administration’s Iraqi Oil Grab Went Awry,” TomDispatch, September 25, 2007 ; “Iraq said not to favor US firms to develop oil fields” (editorial), Azzaman, September 3, 2008 ; Andrew E. Kramer and Campbell Robertson, “Iraq Cancels

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Six No-Bid Oil Contracts,” New York Times, September 10, 2008 .   6. Fatih Abdulsalam, “Iraq Story Takes Back Seat in International Media” (editorial), Azzaman, March 29, 2009 .   7. Nir Rosen (interviewed by Amy Goodman), Democracy Now!, April 9, 2009 .   8. Sunshine, “Why? For how long?....” Days of My Life, August 14, 2009 .   9. “Six Years Later, Iraqis Ready for the US to Leave,” Center for Media and Democracy, March 16, 2009 ; “Iraq Poll February 2009,” ABC News/BBC/NHK, February 2009 ; “Documented Civilian Deaths from Violence: Monthly Table,” Iraq Body Count ; Brian Katulis, “A Standoff in Central Baghdad”, Center for American Progress, March 30, 2009 ; Gideon Polya, “6th Anniversary of Iraq Invasion - $29 trillion Reparations Bill,” Newsvine, March 22, 2009 . 10. “Iraqi Refugee Reaction to Elections Mixed,” UPI, February 4, 2009 . 11. Ahmed (Facebook messages to Michael Otterman), March 24, 2009. 12. Hadeel al-Jawari, “US blamed for flight of Iraq’s brain drain” (editorial), Azzaman, May 12, 2009 ; Patrick Cockburn, “Total Defeat for U.S. in Iraq,” Counterpunch, December 11, 2008 ; “Iraq: Preventing the point of no return,” Refugees International, April 7, 2009 ; Michael Schwartz, “Iraq’s Broken Pieces Don’t Fit Together,” Asia Times, February 13, 2008 ; Harper quoted in Corinne Reilly, “Prospects are dismal for returning Iraqi refugees,” McClatchy, May 22, 2009 . 13. “Iraq Poll February 2009,” ABC News/BBC/NHK; Matthew Schofield, “Baghdad’s Water Still Undrinkable 6 Years after Invasion,” McClatchy, March 18, 2009 ; Salam Pax, “Electricity and Water,” salampax, January 26, 2009 . 14. Riverbend (interviewed by Firas Al-Atraqchi), “Interview: Iraqi Blogger Riverbend,” Al Jazeera, April 9, 2006 ; Pinter, “Nobel Lecture: Art, Truth & Politics” (transcript).

index

60 Minutes, 8, 33 Abbas, Khudair, 126 ABC News, 102, 103, 104 Abizaid, Commander John, 119–20 Abu Dhabi TV, 122 Abu Ghraib prison, 52 Adhamiya, Iraq, 36, 51, 69 Afghanistan, xii, 6, 7, 96–9, 113, 138 Afghanistan invasion (2001): censorship of, 96–100 civilian body counts of, 138–9 Age, The, 156 Agence France-Press, 141 Ahdad oilfield, 209 Ahmed (interviewed Iraqi), 34–7, 69–73, 211–12 Ahtisaari, Martti, 27–8 Aisha (interviewed Iraqi), 77 Albright, Madeleine, 33 Aleppo, Syria, 203 Ali, Salah, 171 Allbritton, Chris, 200 Alter, Jonathan, 104 al-Ali, Mohammed Jasim, 98 al-Ansari, Sheikh Haitham, 65 Al Arabia, 45–6 al-Araji, Faiza (blogger), 44–9, 50 al-Askari mosque bombing, 65, 70, 163 al-Hakeem, Ayatollah, 3 Al Hayat (newspaper), 99 al-Hol refugee camp, Iraq/Syria, 183 Al Iraq (newspaper), 142 Al Jazeera, 46, 54, 56, 98, 118, 121–4, 127, 142 alleged targeting by US military of, 122–4, 127

al-Jibury, Falah, 208 al Karkh, Baghdad, Iraq, 55 Al Khawarizmii, 188 al-Maliki, Nuri, 76, 177 al-Qaddo, Dr. Hunain, 181 al Qaeda, 36 al-Radi, Nuha (diarist), 24–7, 29–32, 44, 57–8 al-Sadr, Muqtada, 76, 202 al-Sheikh, Ahmed, 124 al-Tanf refugee camp, Iraq/Syria, 183 al-Walid refugee camp, Iraq/Syria, 183 al-Zaidi, Muntadar, 210 American Civil Liberties Union, 138 American Statistical Association, 138 Amir (interviewed Iraqi), 14–16, 58 Amiriya shelter bombing, 26, 47, 136 Amman, Jordan 34, 36, 55, 57, 60, 67, 70–3, 80, 82, 83, 203 Anderson, Sir Roy, 156 Appy, Chris, 131 Arab Times, 142 Argentina, 23 Armitage, Richard, 186 Associated Press, 97, 111, 137, 141, 142, 144 Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 109 Austin, Hudson, 91 Australia, xii, 11, 12, 32, 54, 57, 80, 83–7 Ayoub, Tareq, 122 Azzamam (newspaper), 209 Baath Party, 20, 64, 75, 117, 143, 168, 174, 187, 189, 190

238

index  239

Badr Corps, 175–6 Baez, Fernando, 189 Baghdad, Iraq, xii, 16, 18, 20, 21, 22, 29, 35, 38, 43, 48, 55, 56, 57, 65, 66, 72, 74, 75, 78, 80, 83, 84, 85, 105, 106, 137, 159, 163, 174, 188, 191 violence occurring within, ix, xi, 2–4, 8, 10, 24, 26, 28, 36, 37, 44–51, 52, 53, 54, 59, 66, 70–1, 79, 85, 107, 109–10, 122, 126, 128, 169, 171, 173, 175, 178, 179, 182, 184, 189, 190, 192, 193, 194, 198, 200, 202, 203, 209, 212 Baghdad Blogger, see Salam Pax Baghdad Burning (blog), 50, see also Riverbend Baldwin, Tammy, 177 Baltimore Sun, 115 Banfield, Ashleigh, 103 Baquba, Iraq, 18 Barger, Al (blogger), 41 Basel (interviewed Iraqi), 54–6, 84–7 Basra, Iraq, 3, 28, 59, 122, 171, 182, 189 BBC, 46, 56, 140–1, 155 Beckett, Margaret, 155 Beirut, Lebanon, 20, 24, 57, 203 Benjamin, Mark, 117 Bennis, Phyllis, 22 Bingham, Molly, 39 Bishop, Maurice, 91 Blackwater, 10, 119 Blair, Tony, 123–4, 149, 155 Bodine, Barbara, 200 Boston Globe, 109, 118, 139 Branigin, William 108–9 Bremer, L. Paul, 9, 64, 119, 127, 208 British Library, 193 British Medical Journal, 150 British Petroleum, 209 Brodie, Neil, 203 Brookings Institute, 148

Brooks, Bradley, 111 Brown, Campbell, 104 Burnham, Gilbert, 153, 156 Burns, Robert, 137 Bush Agenda: Invading the World One Economy at a Time, The (book), 9 Bush, George H.W., xi, 7, 19, 21, 29 Bush, George W., xi, 5, 8–10, 34–5, 38, 46, 53, 55, 99, 100–3, 113, 115, 117, 123–4, 130, 137, 151–2, 154, 155, 156, 210 Byat al Hikma (House of Wisdom), 188 Cairo, Egypt, 20, 136, 211 Campaign for Innocent Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC) survey of Iraqi dead, 142, 144 Canada, 57, 84, 150 Canegie Mellon University, 138 Cannon, Carl M., 154 Captive Press: Foreign Policy Crises and the First Amendment, The (book), 91 Carlson, Tucker, 101 Carpenter, Ted Galen, 91, 92 Carr Center for Human Rights, 151 Carter, Jimmy, 6–7, 19 Casey, General George, xii, 155 CBS News, 118 CENTCOM (United States Central Command), 109 Center for Refugee and Disaster Response, 153 Central al-Awqaf Library, Iraq, 189 Central Bank, Baghdad, 197, 198 Central Public Library, Basra, 189 Charny, Joel R., 63–4 Chechnya, 204 Cheney, Dick, 7, 35, 134, 136, 137, 208 Chevron, 209

24 0   erasing iraq

Chicago Tribune, 109 China National Petroleum Corporation, 209 China, 209 Clark, Ramsey, 134–5 Clinton, Bill, xi, 29 Cloud, Stanley, 93 CNN, 43, 56, 97, 98, 99, 102, 124, 146, 161, 169, 201 Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), 64, 119, 123, 174, 185, 191, 200 Cockburn, Patrick, 212 Coffs Harbour, Australia 54, 84–6 Cole, Juan, 156 “collateral damage,” 25, 46, 53, 94–5, 107, 114, 115, 133 Columbia Journalism Review, 149 Commonwealth Institute, 114, 143 Conan, Neal, 110 Conetta, Carl, 114–18 Congo civil war civilian body count of, 145–6, 147, 156 Connors, Steve, 39 Conway, Major Alayne, 113 Cooper, Anderson, 102 Copley News Service, 115 Counterpunch (magazine), 126 Couric, Katie, 102 Couso, Jose, 122 Cronkite, Walter, 93 Cuba, 92 Curtis, Mark, 88 Cushman, John, 136 Dabbagh, Ali, 154, 177 Dahuk, Iraq, 66 Daily Mirror, 119, 123 Daily Standard, 115 Damascus, Syria 2, 35, 78, 83, 203 Daponte, Beth Osborne, 137–9 Darfur, Sudan, 156 Dean, Howard, 101

Denial: History Betrayed (book), 4 Denmark, 23 Depleted uranium (DU) weaponry 30, 42, 144 effects of exposure to, 30–1 Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, 93 Diyala, Iraq, 66 Dobbs, Michael, 159 Dole, Robert, 21 Donahue, Phil, 102–3 Donovan, John, 104 Doubt, Keith, xiii, 204–5 Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, 111 Dr. Mohammed (blogger), 73–5 Duma, Syria, 77 Easterbrook, Gregg, 94 Economist, The, 154 Edelman, Eric, 7 Egypt, 23, 66, 82 Eisenberg, Dr. Leon, 28 Empire Notes (blog), 126, see also Rahul Mahajan Epic of Gilgamesh, 188 Eskander, Dr. Saad, 190–6 Executive Intelligence Review, 198 ExxonMobil, 209 Fadel, Abdullah, 136 Fadil, Mohammed (blogger), 38–9 Fadila (interviewed Iraqi), 54–6, 84–7 Fahmy, Shahira, 99 Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), 103, 109, 124 Falklands War censorship of, 89–91 Falluja, Iraq, 65, 112, 147 censorship of seige of, 65, 118–29, 147 Family in Baghdad, A (blog), 48, see also Faiza al-Araji Financial Times, 115

i n d e x   24 1

Fisk, Robert, 109–10, 190 Fleischer, Ari, 35, 100 Foreign Policy in Focus, 9 Fox News, 101 Framing Visual News: The 9/11 Attacks & the War in Afghanistan in English & Arabic Newspapers (report), 99 France, 23 Frank, Barney, 177 Franks, General Tommy, 138, 139, 159 Garlasco, Marc, 117, 148 Gates, Robert M., 29 Gay City News, 175 Geneva Conventions, 9, 130–1, 150 Germany, 203 Getty Images, 108 Ghazaliya, Baghdad, Iraq, 65 Gibson, McGuire, 203 Glaspie, April, 21–2 Golden, Rena, 98 Granta (journal), 24, 57 Graves, Neil, 143 Green Zone, ix, 79, 173 Greenspan, Alan, 34 Grenada invasion (1983) censorship of, 91–2 civilian body counts, of, 133–4 Guardian, 39, 43, 97, 150, 151, 176, 177 Guatemala, 144 Gulf war (1991), 7, 11, 12, 22–8, 56, 61, 93–5, 96, 115, 130, 135–8, 174, 205, 206, 207 censorship of, 93–5 civilian body counts of, 135–9 diary concerning see Nuha alRadi effects on animals, 24, 26, 37 effects on children, 26, 28, 32, 33, 136, 163 effects on electricity, ix, 25 effects on homosexuals, 174

effects on Iraqi health system, 31–2 effects on women, 26, 32 Guterman, Lila, 149 Haditha, Iraq 52 Halabja, Iraq, 21 Halliburton, 79 Halliday, Denis J., 32 Hammorabi (blogger), 39 Hamu, Wahid Mundu, 181 Hannay, Sir David, 29 Hanretty, Karen, 101 Harper, Andrew, 212 Harvard University, 184 Hastings, Robert, 114 Hatra, Iraq, 200 HBO, 108 Herman, Edward S., 97 Highway 9 shooting, 108–9 Hilli, Ali, 174–6, 178 Holland, 203 Hometown News Service, 114 Hondros, Chris, 108 honor killing, 170–1, 175, see also Iraq war effects on women Houston Chronicle, 109 Hughes, Paul, 185 Human Rights Watch, 63, 116, 136, 148, 169, 171 Humphries, Arthur A., 88–91, 119 Hungary, 23 Hussein, Saddam, 1, 3, 7–8, 12, 15, 17, 19, 22–3, 29, 34–6, 38, 40, 41, 46, 47, 57, 61, 62, 64, 104, 130, 136, 151, 168, 169, 174, 179, 182, 183, 184, 189, 190, 196, 198, 206, 207 CIA support of 19–21 Suffering of Iraqi people under, 57, 59, 174, 184 treatment of women under, 168–9 treatment of homosexuals under, 173–4 protection of cultural property under, 189, 196

24 2   erasing i raq

Imus, Don, 101 Independent, (newspaper), 22, 109–10, 190 India, 24, 82 Instapundit (blog), 41 Institute for Policy Studies, 22 International Committee of the Blue Shield, 186 International Council of Museums, 186 International Herald Tribune, 99 International Institute for Strategic Studies, 63 International Organization for Migration (IOM), 69, 212 International Rescue Committee, 145, 163 Iran, xi, 6, 19, 20, 21, 57, 66, 175, 208, 209 Iraq effects of UN sanctions upon, see UN sanctions on Iraq Ministry of Finance of, 208 Ministry of Health of, 32, 127, 152 Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research of, 71, 212 Ministry of Human Rights of, 174 Ministry of Information of, 170, 198 Ministry of Interior of, 8, 48–9, 188, 208 Ministry of Oil of, 8, 188, 197, 208 Ministry of Tourism of, 202 narratives from, see Ahmed; Aisha; Amir; Basel; Dr. Mohammed; Fadila; Faiza al-Araji; Kaezem; Laith; Mama; Miriam; Mohammed; Nuerotica; Nuha al-Radi; Rafed; Riverbend; Sadi; Salam Pax; Sheko Mako; Unnamed Iraqi in Ronna; Unnamed Iraqi man with aunt

statistics on refugees from, 56–7, 62–3, 65, 66–7, 69, 75, 76, 78, 83, 212 Iraq Body Count (IBC), 120, 140–2, 144, 148, 151–2, 159 Iraq in Fragments (film), xi Iraq Liberation Act (1998), 29 Iraq Museum, 184, 188, 197–204 Iraq the Model (blog) 38–9, see also Mohammed Fadil Iraq war (2003): blogs concerning, xiii, 1, 11, 12, 24, 38–53, 58, 66, 73, 75–6, 112, 114, 125, 126–7, 162, 164, 166, 172, 178, 193, 209, 212–13, see also Dahr Jamail; Dr. Mohammed; Dr. Saad Eskander; Faiza al-Araji; Hammorabi; Jo Wilding; Mohammed Mama; Fadil; Rahul Mahajan; Riverbend; Salam Pax; Sheko Mako checkpoint incidents during, 37, 51, 109, 164 civilian body counts of, 118, 139–61, see also Campaign for Innocent Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC) survey; first and second Lancet surveys; Iraq Body Count (IBC); Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq (MSSI); Opinion Research Business (ORB) survey effects on children, 2, 16, 18, 19, 39, 55, 56, 59, 68, 74, 80, 81, 86, 107, 108, 109, 116, 119, 120, 122, 123, 125, 126, 147, 157, 162, 163–8, 182, 183, 204, 206, see also Dr. Mohammed; Riverbend; Sunshine effects on Christians, 3, 58 179–80, 193–4, 198, 202 effects on education, 65, 68, 72, 80, 119, 163, 164–7, 170

i n d e x   24 3

effects on electricity, ix, 43, 164, 191, 195, 209, 212–13 effects on homosexuals, 162, 173–8 effects on Iraqi-Palestinians, 182–3 effects on libraries, 189, see also al-Mutanabi Street; Central al-Awqaf Library; Central Public Library, Basra; National Library and Archives (NLA); University of Baghdad library, University of Basra library effects on Mandaeans, 2–4, 180 effects on museums, see Iraq Museum effects on professionals class, 70–1, 212 effects on Shabaks, 181 effects on women, 74–5, 109, 120, 122, 123, 125, 126, 136, 138, 147, 162, 168–73, see also Mama; Neurotica; Riverbend; Sunshine effects on Yazidis, 181 embedded news coverage of, 104–12, 127–9 kidnapping during, ix, 13, 36–7, 49, 163, 169, 181, 194, 201, see also Sadi; Ahmed looting during, 8, 183–201 mainstream media censorship of, 101–4, 108–11, 124, 127 media workers killed during, 122 Pentagon censorship of, 104–6, 111–18 US military surge strategy during, xi, 139, 159, 160 White House censorship of, 100 Iraqi LGBT (organization), 176, 178 Iskander, Boulos, 179 Israel, 62, 100, 136 Italy, 150

Jaboury, Dr. Mustafa, 71 Jalalabad, Afghanistan, 97 Jamail, Dahr, xi–xiv, 124–5, 126, 141 Jarrar, Khalid, 48–9 Jarrar, Majid, 48–9 Jarrar, Raed (blogger), 39–40, 44, 48, 142 Jazeera, Iraq, 181 Jeramana, Damascus, 2, 77, 79, 83 Johns Hopkins University, 145, 153–5, 160 Johnson, Captain Ronny, 108 Jolles, Laurens, 79 Jordan, 12, 14, 18, 36, 37, 39, 54, 55–6, 57, 66, 67, 75, 77, 80, 81, 83, 84, 85, 136, 146, 174, 211 treatment of Iraqi refugees by, 57, 60–1, 67–75, 80–2 Juhasz, Antonia, 9–10 Kabul, Afghanistan, 48, 98 Kaezem (interviewed Iraqi), 78 Kagan, Daryn 124 Kaplan, Fred, 149 Karbala, Iraq, 59–60 Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), 79 Kennedy, Edward M., 132–3 Kennedy, John F., 100 Khalilzad, Zalmay, 7 Kimmit, Brigadier General Mark, 120, 123, 127 Klare, Michael, 27 Klein, Naomi, 5 Kosovo war (1998), 155 Kreisel, Dr. W., 31 Kucinich, Dennis, 156, 160 Kurdistan, Iraq, 21, 57, 58, 82, 164, 165, 171, 181, 189, 191, 196, 210 Kuwait, 7, 19, 21–3, 27, 28, 32, 64, 174, 207 Laden, Osama bin, 8 Laith (interviewed Iraqi), 18–19, 67–9

24 4   erasing iraq

Lancet first survey of Iraqi war dead, 146–52, 160 second survey of Iraqi war dead, 153–7, 158, 159, 160 LaRivee, Colonel David R., 160–1 Lebanon, 57, 67, 16 Lehrer, Jim, 12 Leo, John, 151 LexisNexis, 153 Libby, I. Lewis “Scooter,” 7 Lindner, Andrew M., 105–6 Loescher, Gil, 63 Longley, James, xi Los Angeles Times, 93, 106, 109, 177 Lossin, R.H., 188 Love and Living (book), ix Lyon, Santiago, 111 MacArthur, John R., 91, 92 Mahajan, Rahul (blogger), 125–7 Mako, Sheko (blogger), 58 Mamma (blogger), 66 Mansur, Ahmed, 121–2, 127 Mass, Peter 38 McCain, John, 12 McClatchy News, 160 McClellan, Scott 35, 102, 152 McPherson, Klim, 150 Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq (MSSI), 157–9, 160, 161 Media Lens, 105, 141, 151, 154, 206 Mercy Corps, 80 Merritt, Captain Roxie T., 113 Merton, Thomas, ix Metcalf, Rear Admiral Joseph, 91 Miller, David, 104–5 Miller, Zoriah, 111–12 Milmo, Cahal, 110 Minneapolis Star Tribune, 115 Miriam (interviewed Iraqi), 77 Mohammad, Yina, 178 Mohammed (interviewed Iraqi), 58–62

Mohr, Charles, 131 Mongols, 188 Monsur, Baghdad, 78 Moore, John B., 110–11 Mosul, Iraq, 14–16, 21, 59, 60, 66, 164–8, 179, 180, 181, 182, 188, 209–10 Moulton, Seth, 186–7 MSNBC, 101, 102, 103 muhabarat (secret police) 42, 82 Munro, Neil, 154 Mushtaq, Laith, 121–2 Mustansiriya University, 71 Muzidin, Sheikh Salah, 171 Nasiriya, Iraq, 107 National Journal, 154 National Library and Archives (NLA), 189–96 National Public Radio (NPR), 109, 110, 113, 128–9, 151 National Security Directive 54, 23 Naval War College Review, 88–9, 119 NBC, 102–3, 104 Neurotica (blogger), 172–3 New England Journal of Medicine, 28 New York Daily News, 109 New York Post, 143 New York Times, 40, 43, 76, 106, 109, 110, 115, 117, 131, 136, 146, 148, 177, 180 New Zealand, 57 Newsday, 111 Newsweek, 20–1, 104, 176, 177 Niiler, Eric, 128–9 Nimmo, Kurt, 99 Nisour Square shooting, 10, see also violence within Baghdad, Iraq Noriega, Manuel, 93, 134 Norris, Michelle, 128 O’Hanlon, Michael, 148, 151 O’Neill, Paul, 8, 34 O’Reilly, Bill, 101

i n d e x   24 5

Obama, Barack, xii, 12, 206, 207, 210 Open Democracy (magazine), 168 Open Society Institute, 154 Operation Desert Storm, 23, 106, see also Gulf war Operation Iraqi Freedom, 34, see also Iraq war Opinion Research Business (ORB) survey on Iraqi dead, 153, 160–1 Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), 6 Orwell, George, 88 Oshima, Kenzo, 63 Oxfam, 172 Oxford, Massachusetts, 12 Pakistan, 20, 24, 32 Palestine, 5, see also effects of Iraq war (2003) on IraqiPalestinians Panama Invasion (1989) censorship of, 93 civilian body counts of, 134–5 Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered From All Sides (book), 131 Paul, Ron, 156 Pauly, General John W., 132–3 Pax, Salam (blogger), 38–48, 50, 213 Pentagon military analyst program of, 112–13 Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) of, 64, 197 perception management/ information operations of, 113–18, 120–1 use of “smart” weaponry by, 26, 94, 115–16, 161 war waged by, see Afghanistan invasion; Grenada invasion, Gulf war; Iraq war; Panama invasion, Vietnam war

People’s Revolutionary Army (PRA), 134 Perkins, General David, ix, x Petraeus, General David, 159–60 Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), 135 Pinter, Harold, xii–xiv, 207, 213 Plain Dealer, 160 Pollard, Stephen, 140–1 Powell, Colin, 7, 35, 146 Price, Niko, 142–3 Primakov, Yevgeny, 22 Project for the New American Century (PNAC), 7 Project on Defense Alternatives, 114, 143, 144 Protsyuk, Taras, 122 Psyche, Science and Society (blog), 141 Pyongyang, North Korea, 48 Qahtaniya, Iraq, 181 Qasim, General Abd al Karim, 20 Qatar, 110, 118, 123, 127 Rafed (interviewed Iraqi), 79–83 Rahho, Archbishop Paulos Faraj, 179–80 Rai, Milan, 28 Random House, 24 Raytheon Corporation, 110 Refugees International, 63, 79 Reuters, 42, 122, 141 Reynolds, Glenn (blogger), 41 Rice, Condoleezza 35, 177 Rinkeby, Stockholm, Sweden, 14–15, 58–9, 61 Riverbend (blogger), 49–53, 75–7, 164, 205, 213 Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 93, 135 Roberts, Les, 145–9, 156, 160 Rogers, Walt, 97 Rokke, Dr. Doug, 30 Rolling Stone, 106–7 Ronna, Soedertaelje, Sweden, 16–17 Rosen, Nir, 209

24 6   erasing iraq

Rumsfeld, Donald, 7, 8, 20, 35, 96, 117, 119, 123, 139, 157, 187, 201 Russia, 209 Rwanda, 204 Saddam Hussein, see Hussein, Saddam Sadi (interviewed Iraqi), 2–4, 13 Sadr City, Baghdad, Iraq, 71, 127, 178 Said, Edward, 11, 33 Saigon, Vietnam, 132 Sale, Richard, 20 Salon (magazine), 117 Saman, Moises, 111 Samarra, Iraq see al-Askari mosque bombing San Francisco Chronicle, 109 Sanctuary (NGO), 85–6 Sanger, David E., 40 Sattar, Kanzfra, 180 Saud, Muna, 171–2 Saudi Arabia, 23, 35, 93, 94, 174 Savage, Michael, 103 Save the Children, 68–9, 80 Schmitt, Eric, 40 Schwartz, Michael, 64 Schwarzkopf, Commander Norman, 135 Scourging of Iraq: Sanctions, Law and Natural Justice, The (book), 23 Seattle Times, 118 Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the 1991 Gulf War (book), 91 Sellers, Joseph, 138 Senor, Dan, 123 September 11 terrorist attacks, 8, 98, 101 Sewall, Sarah, 151 Shaab, Baghdad, Iraq, 65 Sheehan, Cindy, 101 Sheehan, Neil, 132 Shell, 209 Shia (Muslim), xi, 3, 34, 44, 50, 52, 58, 59, 65, 71, 79, 165,

169, 175, 181, 182, 189, 194, 196, 202, 210, 211, 212 Shields, Colonel Guy, 139 Shipman, Claire, 104 Shuala air strike coverup, 109–10 Shuger, Scott, 96 Sidle, Major General Winant, 92 Simons, Geoff, 23 Simpson, Alan, 21 Sina, Ibn, 190 Sistani, Grand Ayatollah Ali, 175, 208 Slate (magazine), 38, 96, 149 Smith, Craig S., 43 sociocide, xii, 11, 13, 162, 204–5, 208 Soldz, Stephen, 141 Soros, George, 101, 154 Soviet Union, 6, 7, 19, 20, 22, 92, 97 Spain, 150 Speakes, Larry, 134 Sponeck, Hans Van, 33 Spurr, Jeff, 184 Stahl, Lesley, 33 Stanford University, 203 Status of Forces Agreement (IraqUSA), 38–9 Stony Brook University, 202 Straw, Jack, 151 Struck, Doug, 97 Sullivan, Martin, 197–8 Sunni (Islam), xi, 3, 34, 44, 50, 65, 71, 79, 165, 169, 182, 183, 194, 196, 210, 211, 212 Sunshine (blogger), 164–8, 205, 209–10 Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), 175 Sweden, 12, 14–17, 58–62 Sydney, Australia, 83 Sygma, 92 Syria xiii, 2, 12, 13, 16, 17, 50, 57, 66, 68, 83, 136, 174, 179, 182–3, 202, 211, 213 treatment of Iraqi refugees by, 68, 75–9 Syrian Arab Red Crescent, 77

i n d e x   24 7

Tal Afar checkpoint shooting, 108 Talabani, Jalal, 177 Tatchell, Peter, 174, 176, 177–8 Taylor, Tony, 4 Telecino (network), 122 The Times (London), 115, 140 Thomas, Helen, 100–1 Thorp, Captain Frank, 117 Time (magazine), 92, 93 Torrey, Barbara Boyle, 137 Total (oil company), 209 Trofimov, Yaroslav, 8, 187 Turkey, 16, 20, 57 Twentieth Century Fund, 92 United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), 152, 177 Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 28, 32, 33, 163–4, 168 Committee on the Rights of the Child, 30–1 Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property, 185 Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women, 169–70 Convention on the Rights of the Child, 163 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugee, 67–8 Development Program (UNDP), 152 Oil for Food program, 32–3 Resolution 660, 22 Resolution 661, 22 Resolution 678, 22 Resolution 687, 28 sanctions on Iraq, xi, 25, 28–34, 205, 206, 207 Security Council, 22, 29, 34 Understanding Evil: Lessons from Bosnia (book), xiii, 204 United Arab Emirates, 203 United Kingdom, 20, 23, 29, 32, 40, 58, 74, 88, 89–90, 105,

115, 123, 141, 150, 151, 154, 155, 156, 160, 174, 186, 191 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 17, 67, 68, 77–8, 79, 82, 84, 211, 212 United Press International (UPI), 20 United States Air Force of, 25–6, 111 and control of Persian Gulf oil, 5–7, 8, 19, 23, 25, 34–5, 100, 188, 197, 208–9 and Iraqi relations, 5–10, 19–24, 29, 206 Census Bureau of, 137–8 military support of Saddam Hussein by, 19–22 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism of, 96 Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction of, 151 State Department of, 20, 115, 135, 146, 201 warfare waged by, see Afghanistan invasion; Grenada invasion, Gulf war; Iraq war; Panama invasion, Vietnam war war on terror waged by, 39, 95 Universal History of the Destruction of Books, A (book), 189 University of Baghdad library, 189 University of Basra library, 189 University of Chicago, 203 Unnamed Iraqi in Ronna (interviewed Iraqi), 16–17 Unnamed Iraqi man with aunt (interviewed Iraqis), 78 USA Today, 106 USS Abraham Lincoln, 8 Veneman, Ann, 168 Vietnam War, 89–90, 118, 144 civilian body counts of, 131–33

24 8  erasing i raq

Wall Street Journal, 8, 187 War Without End: The Iraq War in Context (book), 64 Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, 138 Washington Post, 3, 25, 97, 106, 108, 109, 138, 148, 158, 159, 161, 169, 194 Washinton Times, 146, 147, 154 weapons of mass destruction (WMD), 1, 5, 20–1, 28, 29, 35, 207 Where is Raed? (blog) 40, 43, 48, see also Salam Pax WikiLeaks, 118 Wilding, Jo (blogger), 125–6 Wolfowitz, Paul, 7, 35 Women for Women International, 172

World Food Program (WFP), 32 World Health Organization (WHO), 31, 152 Wright, Evan, 106–8 Wright, Roger, 164 Yant, Martin, 94 Yasilious, Archbishop George, 179 Yellin, Jessica, 102 Yemen, 59, 60 Youkhanna, Dr. Donny George, 198–204, 205 Younes, Kristele, 79 YouTube, 113 Zahira (interviewed Iraqi), 81 Zaida Zeinab, Damascus, Syria, 78