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Reports From Iraq > Mon., May 3, 2004
Fallujah Begins to Bury Its Dead
A volunteer medical team exhumes the body of a middle
aged woman buried in the front yard of a single family
home. The US Marines bombed her car as she was fleeing
Fallujah with her husband. The owner of the house told
Pacifica it was too dangerous to bring her to the cemetery
during the US bombing campaign. |
by Aaron Glantz
FALLUJAH, IRAQ -- A team of local volunteers in surgical
masks lift the rotting corpse of a middle aged woman from
its shallow grave in the front yard of a single family home.
The owner of the house explains the woman has been lying dead
in his front yard for three weeks. He says an American war-plane
bombed her car as she fled the city with her husband, who
is buried in the garden of the house next door. The destroyed
remains of the car still smolder a few meters away from his
front door.
"We couldn't give her a proper burial," he told
Pacifica, "because every time we would go outside American
snipers would shoot at us. They even shot at us when retrieved
her carcass from the car after the Americans bombed it."
The head of the medical team asks to speak anonymously, because
his clinic's ambulance was shot by US Marine snipers twice
during the siege. One of the clinic's volunteers was killed.
"The Americans are dogs," he says. "They try
to kill anybody who works in humanitarian aid. They attack
any humanitarian aid worker, doctor, or ambulance to kill
him."
In the meantime, the aid worker says many corpses continue
to rot under buildings which collapsed on top of them amid
a hail of American fire-power.
The volunteers place the woman onto a gurney and take her
away in a small pick-up truck. In a half-hour, she is buried
in the municipal football stadium along-side 300 other "martyrs"
killed this month by the US military.
****
At the football stadium a new trench has just been dug by
locals working in coordination with neighborhood mosques.
When new bodies come in they are placed in the trench, covered
with dirt, a slab of concrete placed above.
"There was not enough space in the city's graveyards,"
explains 30 year old Fadel Abbas Khlaff who helped bury the
dead in Fallujah's foot-ball stadium for five days before
picking up a gun to fight the US military. "Sometimes
we would bury two people in the same grave to save space."
With the bombing over, area residents have begun to file
through the graveyard looking for their loves ones. Among
them is 50 year old Ahmed Saud Muhasin al-Isawi, who returned
to Fallujah today after three weeks as a refugee. He says
he found two cousins, aged 18 and 13, buried in the stadium.
"They stayed in their houses and didn't go outside,"
he says, "but they're still dead." He says the rest
of his family tried to leave but were prevented from doing
so by persistent American sniper fire.
Ahmed Saud says one of his nieces also died in the US military
assault, but he hasn't yet been able to find her body -- nor
has he been able to locate any of her eight children who went
missing after her death.
"Every day (the Americans) show us that Saddam Hussein
made many mass graves," he says, "Resistance to
occupation is normal. How could they do this? Even the little
children and the families (are dead)."
****
But amid the stench of death, there's also a sense of victory
in Fallujah. Young mujahadin fighters carrying kalashnikov's
and RPG's tour the city on top of cars and motor-bikes to
cheering on-lookers.
Another small crowd gathers at the remains of neighborhood
mosque. Two craters caused by American air-strikes have filled
with raw sewage. Despite the destruction all around them,
most of the men gathered here feel they've won a hard fought
victory.
Ayyad Tapid Abbas was amongst the crowd: "For 25 days
they used everything they had -- tanks, planes, helicopters
-- everything and many other kinds of weapons. They couldn't
enter this heroic city."
"God is with us and we are right," he says. "If
any American appears on the street we will shoot him."
The Sheik of the mosque, Abdul Kadr al-Isawie goes a step
further. He says images released this week of American soldiers
torturing Iraqi prisoners at Saddam's old prison, Abu Grahib,
show suffering and cruelty are the norm under US occupation.
"This torture will not pass without punishment,"
he tells Pacifica. "This is against our dignity. That's
what the residents of Fallujah say."
Sheik Abdul Kadr al-Isawi is hardly cowed by the fury unleashed
by the killing of four American contractors -- whose dead
bodies were dragged through town and then hung from a bridge.
He says a similar fate will meet the members of the US-appointed
Iraqi Governing Council if they fail to respond the allegations
of brutality against incarcerated Iraqis.
"I swear to God that we will pull out the members of
the Governing Council and we will hang them on the old Fallujah
bridge," he tells Pacifica. "Those are the men who
brought America and this destruction and they will hang on
the doors of all the houses in Fallujah."
Sheik Abdul Kadr al-Isawie denies such actions constitute
terrorism; "Is there any terrorist in Iraq?" he
asks. "There is no terrorism and that's a fact. We only
defend our houses and our city."
But for now, it seems, the people of Fallujah will only have
minimal contact with the occupation-appointed Governing Council.
Their resistance has brought them a strange victory of sorts
-- the return of a former general from Saddam Hussein's Republican
Guard. General Jasim Mohammed Saleh, the newly appointed commander
of the all-Iraqi Fallujah Protection Brigade.
The Fallujah native's arrival in the city was cheered by
on-lookers Friday. He won't have a completely free hand, though.
US Marines will remained stationed just outside the city and
General Saleh will have to report to his American superiors.
"We are certainly not withdrawing from Fallujah."
U.S. spokesman Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt told reporters
in Baghdad Friday. "Nothing could be further from the
truth,"
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