Death in Baghdad
19th June 2007
by gordo
The crew at Gorilla’s Guides, many of them workers for relief organizations in Iraq, have done an outstanding job of drawing attention to the chaos that has engulfed the country, and the plight of the refugees. See, for example, this post on the violence that raged across Iraq yesterday, claiming at least 172 lives.
Sadly, several members of the team were caught up in the violence. Two have been killed, and three wounded.
I haven’t gotten word as to whether or not there will be a way of donating to the families of the deceased, but you can honor their memory by making a donation to the Iraq Program of the International Committee of the Red Cross/Crescent/Crystal, and by writing your congressman and demanding a withdrawal from Iraq at the soonest possible date.
(cross posted at Liberal Avenger)
June 20th, 2007 at 12:09 am
Oh, God.
June 20th, 2007 at 9:03 am
Thanks Gordo MFI is in Irak at present everybody is pretty shaken. You already this I think but to give your readers some idea of what life is like in Irak. Mark’s son (my husband!) Du is just back from Irak having been sent there from Afghanistan and got to hold his twin sons for the first time, sometimes life is good.
He and have spent the day today in a daze. Him especially, and today I really know that I am so fortunate to have grown up and lived all my life in safe and peaceful Scandinavia. We are especially upset for Mohammed Ibn Laith who wrote the account of what it is like to be at a bombing that I have linked to at his name.
Mohammed is 16. His father was Laith Abu Mohammed known as “Laith the Imam” who used to write on “Guides”.
Laith Abu Mohammed died in the Arbaeen massacres of March 6th. His mother Zeynab Um Mohammed died of her wounds incurred in the same attack on March 7th.
Hussayn Ibn Laith died a few days before his parents as he ran with his team to the scene of a bombing to rescue survivors - it was what we call a “cascade” bombing attack. - More than one bomb placed in the same location the second one being timed to kill the rescuers and or people fleeing the scene. Hussayn was the brother who Mohammed mentions in “what will we talk about.” He was 17.
His brother Ali Ibn Laith is 8, he was wounded in the attack in which his parents were killed and again yesterday. Fatima their sister had the day before yesterday finished taking her end-of-first-year university exams.
The good news is that Ali, Fatima, and Mohammed, were all sent home from Imam Ali hospital last night after some hours being treated for their wounds.
I’ll echo your suggestion - the Red Cross or Red Crescent as it is in Muslim lands is the only body working everywhere in Irak and outside it too for the victims of this evil and disastrous war. They’re rigorously non-sectarian and have been targeted repeatedly as a result. But they keep on going.
Today is “world refugee day” every time I think “World Refugee Day” and look at the twins I want to cry with a mixture of relief and grief.
Thanks for caring and for writing your posting. There are arrangements already in place for supporting the “Guides” team members.
Erdla Jonsdottir
Gorilla’s Guides
June 20th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
Erdla–
Thanks for writing. It seems that the war has brought chaos and misery to nearly everyone over there. I’m glad your husband made it back OK, and hopefully Mark will be able to come home soon as well.
June 20th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
Gordo,
I read a report about how wonderful it is in the Kurdish part of Iraq ever since the whole thing started back those years ago. According to this report, EVERYONE of the Kurds is so thankful of America and hopes we all realize that this could never have happened for them without us (or US). Then I realized that the newscatcher site I was using had sent me a story from the CBN. I don’t know if that means it is just fiction but when did the CBN become a ‘news’ source? What do you know about the Kurdish north of Iraq? I can’t seem to find any violence up there or at least not like it is down in the south.
June 20th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
Thank you, Gordo for helping to enlighten more people to the truth. I wish you would drop this information over at Dana’s and any other right wing sites. We really need to get more right wingers on board to end this horrid, illegal, and thoroughly craven attack, this invasion of an innocent people with its accompanying multiple deaths daily, and amputations, and invisible destruction of minds, and poisoning by deleted uranium, and cluster bombs…..and on and on. PLEASE drop this info, Gordo, off going over to Dana’s: http://commonsensepoliticalthought.com
June 21st, 2007 at 12:22 am
Blu–
I checked over at Dana’s, but couldn’t find a recent thread about Iraq. It seems that most people on the right are trying hard to forget the war that they say is necessary to preserve civilization as we know it.
June 21st, 2007 at 10:07 am
Thank you, Gordo.
They do tend to get angry with me over there, because I refer to the war often, somehow, I always tend to find the connection with whatever the topic is, to the war. I don’t even try to make the connection. Maybe it is just contrasting the chosen topic of whatever, to the travesty, the horror, of this useless GD bloody war.
June 21st, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Gordo,
Apparently Kurdish Iraq is doing quite well. Here check out this site: http://www.theotheriraq.com/
I realize it is from their Government and therefore it might be a bit biased, but it has much information.
Who is for an independent Kurdistan? Not Turkey, but how about the rest of us?
June 21st, 2007 at 3:09 pm
Clif–
That idea appealed to me until the war started, at which point the Kurds began a program of ethnic cleansing against the Arabs in the region (link). The Kurds are mostly Sunnis, and there are concerns about the way they treat religious minorities, particularly Christians and a sect known as the Yezidis (see here and here).
The two biggest cities in the Kurdish region have not been free of violence. Kurds are being driven out of Mosul, where they are a minority, and Kirkuk is a powderkeg. Just today, there was a major suicide bombing there.
President Talabani has stated that Kirkuk is the Kurdish equivalent of Jerusalem, and the comparison is apt. Like Jerusalem, it sits on the border between two ethnic groups that have fought often over the past few decades. And like Israel, an independent Kurdistan would be a troublesome ally. They would be completely dependent on military aid from the US for their survival, they would press territorial claims against their neighbors, and there would be the constant threat of a crackdown against one minority group or another, whether they be Christian, Shiite, Yezidi, Turkish, Persian, or Arab. I’m not saying that ethnic and religious conflict is always inevitable, but I am saying that it has been common within the Kurdish territories.
At any rate, both the Bush administration and the Iraqi government are opposed to the idea of an independent Kurdistan, so that’s unlikely to come about. But even a semi-autonomous Kurdistan creates problems for us, as we’ve seen in during the latest conflict between the Kurds and our NATO allies in Turkey. The Turks claim that the local government isn’t doing enough to find terrorists based in Kurdish Iraq, terrorists who have recently set off bombs inside Turkey. And a lot of reports indicate that Turkey has already been shelling areas of Kurdish Iraq (we can thank every president since Nixon for helping to establish the doctrine that bombing and shelling are not really acts of war).
So the short answer to your question is, “No, I don’t think that establishing an independent Kurdistan is a good idea.” It’s too bad that Paul Bremer and the rest of the Bush cabal chose to fan the flames of ethnic conflict instead of working toward a united Iraq, because it means that there now really are no good options. But I still think that keeping the Kurdish region under the authority of the central Iraqi government is the way to go.
June 21st, 2007 at 5:56 pm
The Kurds?
They’ve killed/murdered thousand in Turkey over the last few years or so. Foreign tourists included — in fact the Kurds make a habit of that — especially at times like now — the tourist season.
June 21st, 2007 at 5:57 pm
That should have read thousandS, btw.
June 21st, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Gordo,
Thanks for the information on that. It appears that like with most things any situation can be explained in at least two different ways. In any case, I have written my senators about this situation (Iraq) and have stated that I, one of their voters (although I admit I have NEVER voted for one of them), am in favor of bringing this situation to an end as soon as is possible. Of course, I don’t have any idea how to do that. The little girl in the photo above will still, as will many others, suffer the same sort of fate or worse after the Americans are gone. However, I am not convinced that Americans being there is making anything better for those like the little girl. In short, our absence will make things worse and we all know that but our presence has not and will not make things any better. This is a civil war (there is nothing civil about any war) and by removing an evil tyrant we let this civil war out of the bottle of oppression it was lying in.
June 21st, 2007 at 6:16 pm
I can only look at that picture for a few seconds before it overloads my emotional pain threshhold. I mean, I can satnd it…but I’m pissed of I have to stand it. I’m pissed off that people I know are not pissed off enough to take any meaningful action. I mean, they don’t even talk about it. It’s like me and sports. I don’t follow it, and if it’s brought up, I’m acutely aware of how little it has to do with anything important in *my* life. That’s how so many I know are about what the current criminal misadministration are doing to us and more violently, others around the globe. They might be able to ignore it and sleep soundly, but the people described here and their unimaginable suffering cannot escape it. Human beings are selfish, largely ignorant, barely evolved creatures. There is no way that decent human beings can keep from being trampled by the evil ones and their ambivalent enablers.
Joseph Heller said, “Catch-22 means people are able to do to you anything you cannot prevent them from doing to you.”
June 21st, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Clif–
I think that our absence will make things better. There would probably be a surge in violence in the short term, but that surge will come even if we stay. It will just take a bit longer to generate. We’ve seen that surge building during the entire time of the occupation, and things would be better now if we had left at just about any moment in the past.
For example, if we had left in January of 2006, it’s unlikely that the violence would have ever surpassed the level that we’re seeing right now, and it would already be starting to ebb. Things would be even better if we had left in 2005 or 2004.
The longer we stay, the more intractable the problems become, and the longer it’s going to take for the Iraqis to sort things out when we finally do leave.
Lance–
I had the same reaction to that photo. More and more, people are starting to wake up to the horror that we’ve created in Iraq. Unfortunately, it might take another election to convince the politicians. And at that point, the challenge will be to help keep people aware of the plight of the 4 million+ refugees that the war has created.
June 21st, 2007 at 10:13 pm
Here is Bush’s freer Iraq!
The hell that child witnessed, I can’t express in socially acceptable terms how angry I am at the rudderless idiots in the White House. What soulless driven evil dwells inside those hollow vessels we sadly call president and vice president.
June 22nd, 2007 at 6:53 am
Did the ‘US/UK coalition of the willing’ invader/ccupiers find the Iraqis fighting and killing each other when they arrived?
Like hell they did.
June 22nd, 2007 at 7:18 am
Blubonnet, ove at LA Dana recently advocated ‘killing them all now and getting it over with’.
If that’s not a call for a final solution/genocide, I don’t know what the hell is.
As for the picture of the little girl, there are thousands like that — in fact, many are much, mush worse. I’ve seen lots of them. The trouble is that some are so awful that people won’t even look at them past the first one.
I call that reluctance ‘Guilt’ - with a capital G.
June 22nd, 2007 at 7:45 am
Here’s just one example.
And if you can stomach it, here are a few examples of what’s happened to some of the Iraqi children themselves.
Googling for iraq child images will bring up plenty, although some relevant specialist sites have ‘accidentally’ gone missing from the web.
June 22nd, 2007 at 7:46 am
Aaarrgghhh.
Best to just do the image google yourself.
June 22nd, 2007 at 10:04 am
Brit–
Here’s what an image search for Iraq Child turns up.
To input links, just copy the url of the link, come back and highlight a section of your text, hit the “link” button, and paste the url.
June 22nd, 2007 at 9:36 pm
[…] Ibn Laith, 16 years old, wrote the post after the death of his brother, a month before the death of his parents, and prior to surviving a recent bombing, alongside his brother and sister, that claimed the lives […]