News & Politics > Special Report
Under the Shadow of War
ON THE GROUND IN IRAQ

Text&Photographsby
LORNATYCHOSTUP

On February 8 Chronogram Senior Editor Lorna Tychostup traveled to Amman, Jordan and then on to Baghdad and other cities in Iraq with the group Voices in the Wilderness/Iraq Peace Team. She returned after three weeks in Iraq on March 1. This is the first of a two-part article documenting conditions in Iraq as the diplomatic process to prevent a war was failing, and the US and its allies were declaring the failure of the weapons inspection process and moving toward a war-under-any-circumstance position. As we go to press, bombs are falling on Baghdad and the invasion of Iraq by US and British ground forces has begun. By the time you read this, the war may be over.

The drive across the desert is as surreal as it is desolate. Long
stretches of vast open space change in hue and depth as the
sun moves across the sky. The sun blazes but is not hot as expected, but then nothing is as I have expected. There is the occasional shepherd tending his large roaming herd-sometimes he rides a donkey or has a few camels mingling among the sheep. Bedouin tents appear in the far off distance from time to time. There are a very few scattered rest areas-clusters of seven or eight round cement tables with matching benches-along the roadside. In addition to the continuous flow of speeding oil tankers (the stated speed limit is an ignored 90 kilometers per hour), families must trek along this long, flat, straight highway. It is the only road on which one can make the 12-hour traverse through terrain of incredible beauty and immense nothingness from Amman to Baghdad.

I am in the land of the Bible. The shepherds are here as they have always been-and perhaps always will be. As we get closer to our destination, houses begin to dot the landscape and we pass through Ar Ramadi, which Sattar, our driver, identifies as a "big town." More shepherds and their herds are joined by fields full of running soccer players in bright, clean, crisp colors. And then back out into the openness. Just after crossing the Euphrates, we pass through the town of Al Fallujah. Today is the first day of the Eid Uladha, the Feast of Sacrifice, one of the two major Muslim holidays. "Abraham is the father of all the religions," Sattar says. "So the story of the Eid Uladha [Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son at God's command] is found in the Koran, the Bible, and the Torah."

An informational statement which would lead one to believe a unity exists here in the land of Abraham, Jesus, and Mohammed. Yet war is no stranger to this region, nor the Iraqi people. The US-backed Iran-Iraq war began in 1980 and raged for 10 years. It was the era of "dual containment" on the part of the US, who saw the two countries as a threat to its control of oil interests.

"The problem was not that [Iran or Iraq] would take the oil away," UN and Middle East specialist Phyllis Bennis once told interviewer David Barsamian. "Clearly, either country would have to sell oil on the world market to make a living. But the question was going to be, who would be in control of access to that oil? For the US the concern was far greater with its allies (but competitors, economically) in Germany and Japan, and elsewhere in Europe, as well. The US wanted to remain guarantor of access to oil for its allies. That gave it a great deal of economic and political power vis-a-vis its allies, not particularly vis-a-vis Iran or Iraq. But those were the only two countries in the Middle East with the requisites for indigenous power: water, land, people, and wealth through oil. No other countries in the Middle East have all these. That made them contenders for regional power and therefore threats potentially to US strategic interests in the area. So...the US made a decision to support Iraq tactically throughout that war by providing it with military assistance, both intelligence and weapons, but it wanted to do so to balance the imbalance. Iran was seen as the more dangerous and potentially the more powerful of the two. The US wanted the fighting to continue."

US support for Saddam Hussein's government actually began back in the 1970s, but it wasn't until the 1980s that supplies of military intelligence and weapons of mass destruction began to be imported in full force from Iraq's primary diplomatic supporter-the US. According to Bennis, "Specifically, biological weapons from one company in particular outside of Washington, the American Type Culture Collection, under contracts by the US Commerce Department, provided the biological weapons material to make anthrax, E. coli, botulism, and a host of other terrible biological diseases."

Even after the Iranian troops were killed on the border-Iraq lost one million men to that war-and Iraqi Kurds in Halabja in northern Iraq were supposedly killed by Saddam's chemical weapons (a recent New York Times article stated that perhaps the Iranians had used the gas on their own population), US sales of these weapons of mass destruction to Iraq continued, in clear violation of a multitude of international agreements.

"9/11 is the first time America touched the war," says Saheed, an Iraqi Christian living in Amman. The cancerous growths that bloat his neck like a bull frog's, despite multiple chemotherapy treatments, have done nothing to stop his incessant chain smoking. "The first time I watched I thought it was a film. I was crying for them. I didn't like what happened. Many people die[d] for the work done in those buildings-the World Trade Center, the Pentagon. Since the beginning of the war in Iraq, about one and a half million children have died. If this new war happens-and I pray it doesn't-how many people will be sick in the years to come? I know people who were in Iraq and saw children playing with pieces of bombs. Maybe these children [will] now die."

Saheed is speaking about the depleted uranium (DU) about to be unleashed on Iraqi land through the countless missiles of "Operation Shock and Awe." The infamous by-product of the nuclear power industry, over 500,000 tons of deadly DU have accumulated to date, and 4,000 to 5,000 more tons are being produced every year. Disposal of this highly radioactive material poses quite a problem. According to Huda, an Iraqi woman with dual American/Iraqi citizenship I met while traveling, her sister suffers from cancer she believes is directly linked to DU-"the US gives it away for free to manufacturers" of missiles, bombs, and fighter plane engines. DU's incredible level of density-almost twice that of lead-makes it the ideal coating for such weapons.

"It is so hard, they coat the bombs with it," says Huda. "It makes a hole in the roof and then explodes deep inside. My 43-year-old sister can't walk. The cancer started in her legs and crushed her back. In 1991, for three weeks, war didn't kill us. But still today, the depleted uranium keeps on killing."

Extremely volatile, DU vaporizes at 132.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Similar to asbestos, when DU explodes, it turns into dust and powder that spreads widely and easily. Once inhaled it produces deadly cancers and birth defects. The half-life of DU is 4.5 billion years.

Later, while walking through a graveyard of vehicles destroyed during the Gulf War, I'm reminded of Huda's words. Rusted, burnt-out carcasses of armored tanks, buses, cars, and trucks lie strewn around a barren desert field. As I pick my way through this wasteland, with fellow Iraq Peace Team members Doug Johnson, Jeremy Scahill of Democracy Now, and photographer Thorn Anderson, our "minder"-the government representative who is required to travel with us to this place only a short drive from the Kuwaiti border in southern Iraq-reminds us that these mangled hulks are loaded with depleted uranium. The missiles from the attack here left behind more than 300 tons of DU in the Safwan region, causing cancer and congenital birth defects to skyrocket.

This is not to mention the DU dust inhaled and ingested by American troops whose illnesses and deaths continue today, and gave rise to the coining of Gulf War Syndrome. A Department of Veterans Affairs report released in April 2002 stated that 7,758 Desert Storm vets have died since returning home from the Gulf War and another 198,716-28 percent of the vets who fought in the Gulf War-have filed claims for medical and compensation benefits. With claims still being filed, 156,031 have been granted as service-connected.

They too had made their way across the windy, dry colorless terrain that my companions and I now retrace, wondering afterward if we also might be affected by the deadly dust-becoming just a few more victims hollowly defined as collateral damage. Once back at the hotel in Basra, I immediately take off all my clothes and wrap them in plastic until I can get them cleaned. There is no time to shower, so I wash as best I can, including my boots. Later, I have one of the impoverished shoeshine boys outside the hotel spiff them up, while wondering guiltily if he too would become collateral damage at some future date.

According to UNICEF, in 1990 Iraq had one of the best-educated and healthiest populations in the world. Its child mortality rate was one of the lowest in the world. Today in Iraq more than 5,000 children under five die every month. In 2002 UNICEF estimated that 70 percent of child deaths resulted from diarrhea and respiratory infections. The stated reasons are twofold: "the prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of the [Persian Gulf War]" on the people. In addition to the lingering effects of the unleashed depleted uranium, 12 years of US- and British-backed sanctions have visibly decimated a once-thriving population.

Although vividly apparent everywhere I visit, the effects of the sanctions are made brutally clear to me on my first morning in Baghdad. As in all the days that follow, my culture shock takes a back seat to the living realities of a war-torn country. I leave the sparkling clean, white-tiled lobby of my hotel to breathe in the cool, dry Baghdad air. Before going more than 20 steps, I hear rumblings and see food flying from an open dumpster. A boy reveals himself, his mouth and lower face covered with food. As I stare at him, unable to process this spectacle before my eyes-perhaps refusing to process it-I instinctively swing my backpack to the ground and take my camera out. "There is to be no photographing without the permission of a minder. Especially buildings," was what the Voices in the Wilderness representative, Ramzi Kysia, had said during orientation in Amman. But he had also said portraits were OK. Assessing the situation, I decide to take the shot as the boy raises his hand to his mouth and starts yelling defensively in Arabic that he is eating. His screaming makes me hesitate and within a few seconds-seeing that I mean him no interference-he goes back to his breakfast. I snap away, not knowing how many shots I am taking. Later I find out I had only taken three shots. Three were enough.

Back at my hotel, I have a brief conversation with Cameron, a former scientist turned desk clerk at the Andalus Apartments. Clean, neat in appearance, dressed in a black suit and tie, his mustache full and turned up at the corners, impeccable in every way, Cameron's dark eyes gather moisture as he thanks me for being an American.

"You are so much braver than me," he says, eyes betraying the immense stress of war's approach and exhaustion that working triple shifts brings on.

"No," I reply. "It is you who are brave." (My life as a privileged American had not yet allowed me to feel that I could be killed in that gentle place filled with Cameron's face and those of all the other Iraqis I had laid eyes on.)

"No," he firmly states. "I live here. I have no choice. But you...you come here and leave your family to help us. You are so much braver."

I want to change the subject, ashamed that my country - the America I represent to this man - will possibly kill, or at the very least, change this man's life in the way only living through an avalanche of missiles can.