- The smell of the dead pours into the street through the
air-conditioning ducts. Hot, sweet, overwhelming. Inside the Baghdad morgue,
there are so many corpses that the fridges are overflowing. The dead are
on the floor. Dozens of them. Outside, in the 46C (114F) heat, Qadum Ganawi
tells me how his brother Hassan was murdered.
-
- "He was bringing supper home for our family in Palestine
Street but he never reached our home. Then we got a phone call saying we
could have him back if we paid $50,000 [£27,500]. We didn't have
$50,000. So we sold part of our home and many of our things and we borrowed
$15,000 and we paid over the money to a man in a car who was wearing a
keffiyeh scarf round his head.
-
- "Then we got another phone call, telling us that
Hassan was at the Saidiyeh police station. He was. He was blindfolded and
gagged and he had two bullets in his head. They had taken our money and
then they had killed him."
-
- There is a wail of grief from the yard behind us where
50 people are waiting in the shade of the Baghdad mortuary wall. There
are wooden coffins in the street, stacked against the wall, lying on the
pavement.
-
- Old men--fathers and uncles--are padding them with grease-proof
paper. When the bodies are released, they will be taken to the mosque in
coffins and then buried in shrouds. There are a few women. Most stare at
the intruding foreigner with something approaching venom. The statistics
of violent death in Baghdad are now beyond shame. Almost a year ago, there
were sometimes 400 violent deaths a month. This in itself was a fearful
number to follow the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. But in the first
10 days of this July alone, the corpses of 215 men and women were brought
to the Baghdad mortuary, almost all of them dead from gunshot wounds. In
the second 10 days of this month, the bodies of a further 291 arrived.
A total of 506 violent deaths in under three weeks in Baghdad alone. Even
the Iraqi officials here shake their heads in disbelief. "New Iraq"
under its new American-appointed Prime Minister is more violent than ever.
-
- Qadum Ganawi puts his hand on my arm. "Listen,"
he says. "My brother had two tiny children. One is only a year old.
We have sold our house and borrowed $15,000. How can we ever pay this back?
And we have nothing for it but the grief of losing my dear brother.
-
- "He was a car importer so they thought he was rich.
He wasn't. And, you know, his wife is Syrian. She went to Syria for a holiday
with the two babies. She is there now. She doesn't know what has happened
to her husband."
-
- Trucks are arriving in the street beside us, a pick-up
and a small lorry with corpses for autopsy. Tony Blair says it is safer
here. He is wrong. Every month is a massacre in Baghdad. Thieves, rapists,
looters, American troops at checkpoints and on convoys, revenge killers,
insurgents, they are shooting down the people of this city faster than
ever.
-
- One man was shot dead by a US soldier as he overtook
their convoy on the way to his Baghdad wedding. We found out only because
his marriage was to have been celebrated in a hotel occupied by journalists.
Another death I discovered only when an old Iraqi friend called on me last
week. He wanted me to help him leave Iraq. Quickly. Now.
-
- "I work for the Americans at the airport but I think
I'm done for if I stay." Why? "Because my uncle worked at the
airport for the Americans, just like me. My uncle was Abdullah Mohi. He
was driving home the other night but they stopped him a hundred metres
from his house. Then they took a knife and cut his throat. We found him
drenched in blood at the steering wheel." Abbas looks at me with dead
eyes. "Should I go to Jordan? Help me."
-
- At the mortuary, a big, tall man, Amr Daher, walks up
to me. "They killed one of our tribal leaders from the Dulaimi tribe,"
he says. "This morning, right in the middle of Al-Kut Square, just
a couple of hours ago." Selman Hassan Salume was driving with his
two teenage sons when three gunmen came alongside in a car and shot him
dead. Both his sons were wounded, one seriously.
-
- Hospital records tell only part of the story. In the
blazing heat of an Iraqi summer, some families bury their dead without
notifying the authorities. Some remain unidentified for ever, unclaimed.
The Americans bring in corpses. When they do, there are no autopsies. The
morticians will not say why. But the Ministry of Health has told doctors
there should be no autopsies in these cases because the Americans will
already have performed the operation.
-
- Not long ago, six corpses arrived at the Baghdad mortuary
after being brought in by US forces. Three were unidentified. Three had
names but their families could not be found. All had suffered, according
to the American records, "traumatic wounds to the head", the
normal phrase for gunshot wounds. There were no autopsies. Death is now
so routine even the most tragic of deaths becomes a footnote. A US tank
collides with a bus north of Baghdad. Seven civilians are killed. The Americans
agree to open an investigation. It makes scarcely a paragraph in the local
press. Four days ago, a US M1A1 Abrams tank crossing the motorway at Abu
Ghraib collided with a car carrying two girls and their mother, all of
whom were crushed to death. It did not even make the news in Baghdad.
-
- No wonder the occupying powers--or the "international
forces" as we must now call them--steadfastly refuse to reveal the
statistics of Iraqi dead, only their own
-
- Even the deaths we do know about during the past 36 hours
make shocking reading. At Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad, gunmen killed two
Iraqi police officers travelling to their station. In Kirkuk, an Iraqi
policeman, Luay Abdullah, was shot as he waited for a lift home after guarding
an oil pipeline. A Kurdish woman and her two children were killed when
someone sprayed their home in Kirkuk with gunfire. A Kurdish peshmerga
guerrilla was murdered in a drive-by shooting.
-
- A former government official was killed in Baghdad. Then
yesterday afternoon, a senior civil servant at the Iraqi Interior Ministry
in Baghdad was shot dead. In the town of Buhriz, hours of fighting between
insurgents and US troops left 15 dead, according to the Americans. All,
they said, were gunmen, although it almost always transpires that civilians
are among the dead in such battles.
-
- American documents say insurgent groups "have become
more sophisticated and may be co-ordinating their anti-coalition efforts,
posing an even more significant threat". There is an increase in drive-by
shootings. And, a chilling remark this, for all would-be travellers in
and out of Baghdad, the Americans believe "recent attacks on air assets
suggest that all type of aircraft, civilian, fixed-wing and military ...
are seen as potential targets of opportunity".
-
- So the war is getting worse. The casualties are growing
by the week. And Mr Blair thinks Iraq is safer.
-
- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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