Letter from Baghdad
Feb. 13th, 2003 07:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gordonzolaThis is a letter from an old friend of mine. I usually wouldn't post something like this because, well, it's not like most of us haven't seen this type of e-mail before, but I feel a responsibility to pass it on. Probably because I've known the author for over 15 years. Here ya go:
january 31
i'm writing to you from baghdad, where xxxx and i have been for the past 2 weeks documenting on video the humanitarian crisis that looms for the children and people of iraq
if and when the u.s. invades. after the gulf war and a decade of bombing raids and sanctions which have killed at least a half a million children, the country is like a huge refugee camp -- its people dependent on food rations for subsistence, its tap water badly contaminated, its hospitals filled with dying children suffering from water-born diseases, its public health infrastructure on the verge of collapse. the u.n. estimates that at least a half million more will die in the coming war. and a million will become refugees.
the cities we've visited--bagdhad, kerbala, fao, basra, kut, seem eerily calm on the eve of war. i see no massive military deployment here, few soldiers in the streets, no military convoys and in the capital we've yet to see one tank or jeep or sandbag. yes, there are soldiers in front of the govt. buildings with kalishnikovs in their hands. but hardly looking proportional to the deployment of our troops and aircraft carriers to the gulf.
the rhythm of the cities seems undisturbed, except for the air raid sirens you hear every few hours in the no fly zones when one of our pilots is flying overhead. haven't heard these sirens since the duck and cover drills when i was in elementary school in washington. but these are for real. when the siren blasted my first day in basra near the kuwait border i wanted to run and hide, but soon realized there was no safe place to go.
we met a man whose 6 year old died in his arms after a u.s. bomber hit his neighborhood 4 years ago, a 25 year old woman whose leg was splintered and part of her skull crushed in december when a u.s. missile hit the parking lot of the oil refinery office where she worked. we visited a bomb shelter where over 400 women and children were killed in 1991 when our bombers mistakenly dropped its payload on what they thought was a military site in residential baghdad.
we talked with parents watching vigil over their 10 year old dying of sand-fly illness which has resurged since pesticides were outlawed by the sanctions as dual-use. and we saw too many babies in rehydration clinics dying of malnutrition caused by diareheal diseases from drinking water only half-treated by the bombed-out and broken down water treatment plants which are the most lethal casualties of the war.
hopefully it's not these images that will stay with me, but instead the faces of children playing soccer and foosball and marbles in the streets of Baghdad, eating cotton candy, flying hand-made kites, flashing peace signs and smiles, women getting their hair styled in beauty salons, pushing their children on the swings, and the beautiful smile of the mother of 5 who told me i could come to her home once the war starts and that she would protect me, and also that bush would never ever take their oil.
like nicaraguans i met during the contra war and cubans i met surviving despite sanctions, most iraqis i talked with make the distinction between the government of the u.s. and it's people. i have been welcomed and embraced. and although the day i left for baghdad there were hundreds of thousands marching through my home city to protest this war, i really wonder if the iraqis are being far too generous.
i heard today from an american journalist I met that in the first 24-48 hours of the war, the pentagon will be applying it's shock and awe strategy: a cruise missile will rain down on baghdad an average of every 4 minutes. hard to imagine that tonight, looking up towards a sky filled only with stars. i return to nyc tomorrow, safe and sound.
(check out the report from the center for economic and social rights which
sponsored the delegation of doctors and public health experts we were with.
www.cesr.org)
january 31
i'm writing to you from baghdad, where xxxx and i have been for the past 2 weeks documenting on video the humanitarian crisis that looms for the children and people of iraq
if and when the u.s. invades. after the gulf war and a decade of bombing raids and sanctions which have killed at least a half a million children, the country is like a huge refugee camp -- its people dependent on food rations for subsistence, its tap water badly contaminated, its hospitals filled with dying children suffering from water-born diseases, its public health infrastructure on the verge of collapse. the u.n. estimates that at least a half million more will die in the coming war. and a million will become refugees.
the cities we've visited--bagdhad, kerbala, fao, basra, kut, seem eerily calm on the eve of war. i see no massive military deployment here, few soldiers in the streets, no military convoys and in the capital we've yet to see one tank or jeep or sandbag. yes, there are soldiers in front of the govt. buildings with kalishnikovs in their hands. but hardly looking proportional to the deployment of our troops and aircraft carriers to the gulf.
the rhythm of the cities seems undisturbed, except for the air raid sirens you hear every few hours in the no fly zones when one of our pilots is flying overhead. haven't heard these sirens since the duck and cover drills when i was in elementary school in washington. but these are for real. when the siren blasted my first day in basra near the kuwait border i wanted to run and hide, but soon realized there was no safe place to go.
we met a man whose 6 year old died in his arms after a u.s. bomber hit his neighborhood 4 years ago, a 25 year old woman whose leg was splintered and part of her skull crushed in december when a u.s. missile hit the parking lot of the oil refinery office where she worked. we visited a bomb shelter where over 400 women and children were killed in 1991 when our bombers mistakenly dropped its payload on what they thought was a military site in residential baghdad.
we talked with parents watching vigil over their 10 year old dying of sand-fly illness which has resurged since pesticides were outlawed by the sanctions as dual-use. and we saw too many babies in rehydration clinics dying of malnutrition caused by diareheal diseases from drinking water only half-treated by the bombed-out and broken down water treatment plants which are the most lethal casualties of the war.
hopefully it's not these images that will stay with me, but instead the faces of children playing soccer and foosball and marbles in the streets of Baghdad, eating cotton candy, flying hand-made kites, flashing peace signs and smiles, women getting their hair styled in beauty salons, pushing their children on the swings, and the beautiful smile of the mother of 5 who told me i could come to her home once the war starts and that she would protect me, and also that bush would never ever take their oil.
like nicaraguans i met during the contra war and cubans i met surviving despite sanctions, most iraqis i talked with make the distinction between the government of the u.s. and it's people. i have been welcomed and embraced. and although the day i left for baghdad there were hundreds of thousands marching through my home city to protest this war, i really wonder if the iraqis are being far too generous.
i heard today from an american journalist I met that in the first 24-48 hours of the war, the pentagon will be applying it's shock and awe strategy: a cruise missile will rain down on baghdad an average of every 4 minutes. hard to imagine that tonight, looking up towards a sky filled only with stars. i return to nyc tomorrow, safe and sound.
(check out the report from the center for economic and social rights which
sponsored the delegation of doctors and public health experts we were with.
www.cesr.org)
