- ABU SIFFA, IRAQ
- "How could this happen?" nearly everyone asks these days. But
as the U.S. now releases hundreds of men from Abu Ghraib prison, another
question, "why were so many Iraqis locked up there in the first place?"
is likely to become part of the debate.
-
- The story of this farming hamlet 30 miles north of Baghdad
sheds a lot of light on that question.
-
- "On December 16, 2003, at 2:00 am, on a rainy night,
all the houses in Abu Siffa, about two dozen, were surrounded by U.S. troops
in tanks and humvees. They surrounded the fields of the farmers by tanks
and they destroyed the fences of the fields," citrus farmer, Mohammed
Al-Tai explained to a delegation from Christian Peacemaker Teams visiting
the village to document detainees' stories.
-
- Soldiers from the Army's 4th Infantry Division rounded
up two attorneys, 15 schoolteachers, men in their 80's, a blind man, police
officers, young teens, and an elderly man so frail he had to be carried
by the soldiers, Al-Tai said. In all, 83 men disappeared that night, virtually
every male in the village.
-
- His description of that night continued. "They destroyed
the doors of the houses and of the rooms. At night usually the doors of
the bedrooms are locked, so they kicked the doors in and destroyed them
by their weapons. After that they gathered the men, beating them severely.
One was an old man and they smashed his glasses, and for that old man they
had to guide him."
-
- Before the soldiers finished the Abu Siffa raid, Al-Tai
added that they also "stole from Imad, the attorney, about 14 million
dinars ($10,370). From his father, Kamel, they stole 4.5 million dinars
($3,300). They stole 4 million dinars ($3000) from Ziad, an Iraqi police
officer, and from all the other houses together, about 100,000 to 150,000
dinars ($75 to $110). They also took five cars. Later they returned two
of them that belonged to police officers who died in the line of duty."
-
- The reason for the raid was to apprehend Kais Hattam,
Al-Tai said, adding that Hattam claimed he planned to surrender to the
Americans the following morning. In a later interview, Lt. Colonel Nathan
Sassaman, commander of the division's 1st Battalion, the unit responsible
for the district including Abu Siffa, confirmed that Hattam was their man,
but doubted he would have surrendered voluntarily.
-
- Sassaman said that Hattam was on a "wanted"
list because his name appeared in Ba'ath Party documents found with Saddam
Hussein, captured less than three days before the Abu Siffa raid. He described
Hattam as a "key figure, one of five regional directors of the Ba'ath
Party."
-
- The Lt. Colonel's version of the raid was that 73 people,
not 83 were rounded up, all adults. He said his men found a several-acre
compound with a large quantity of material for making IEDs (Improvised
Explosive Devices), weapons, and "just a ton of explosives."
He added that three of the detainees were later released for health reasons.
-
- Asked why so many villagers were rounded up after the
Army got the man they were looking for, he replied that the amount of weapons
and explosives implicated Abu Siffa was a center of resistance, further
proven by the fact that his base had been mortared from that area.
-
- The CPT delegation in Abu Siffa listened to Mohammed
Al-Tai and several of his neighbors explain that six weeks after the December
pre-dawn raid on their village, 79 adult men were still held in Abu Ghraib,
still without visiting privileges. They said that one ill detainee had
been released. Contrary to Sassaman's claim that no children were apprehended,
Al-Tai said three children had been transferred to Al-Karkh, a special
youth prison in Baghdad. The farmer and another villager said they'd been
able to visit, albeit under difficult conditions. "It is not easy
to get there, the lines are very long, and even family members are kept
behind a line 20 feet away from their children."
-
- Hania, wife of attorney-detainee, Kamel Khoumais, added
in sad tones, "For 47 days I did not see him. I tried. I went to Abu
Ghraib prison twice. I was turned back with tears." On the night of
the raid, soldiers took their family car, she related, and her little finger,
still swollen and red, was broken when the keys were ripped out of her
hand.
-
- The raid that swept up all of Abu Siffa's men is only
part of that village's story.
-
- After describing the December 16 roundup, Al-Tai took
the delegation on a door-to-door tour of his village, starting with a vacant
house where Abbas Abdwahid had lived with 15 members of his extended family.
The 41 year-old primary school teacher and several other former residents
of the home were now living in Abu Ghraib. Large holes in the brick walls,
daylight through the roof, and an orange and white VW Passat taxi smashed
up against a rear corner of the house by a Bradley Fighting Vehicle were
silent reminders of the Army's second raid on Abu Siffa, on New Year's
Eve.
-
- No men were apprehended this time, Al-Tai said; "there
were none left." The purpose of the return visit was made clear when
the Bradley gunners opened fire with the 25mm Bushmaster chain gun and
the 7.62mm machine gun, blasting holes large and small into the brick and
cement-block home.
-
- On January 2 the military came back. Al-Tai showed us
the rear of another vacant house where he said four brothers, now all in
Abu Ghraib, once lived. Still visible were the tracks the Bradley made
as it approached the home of Hamis, Abd Kadir, Mohammed and Jasim. As with
the previous raid, there was no resistance, Al-Tai said. After another
display of firepower the soldiers left. The uninhabitable home, a flattened
brick outhouse, a pile of 25mm shell casings and a steel door shot off
its hinges, bleeding rust stains from dozens of bullet holes, spoke of
that night's violence. As the CPT delegation listened, one of the villagers
added, "The soldiers warned the people that they will make this area
'just like the land of the moonit will not be good to plant...it will be
like the desert.'"
-
- When asked why the Army returned twice to destroy homes,
the 1st Battalion's Executive Officer, Major Rob Gwinner, countered the
homes were "still habitable. People are living in them." His
boss, Lt. Col. Sassaman, said the subsequent raids were a reaction to mortar
attacks against his base from the Abu Siffa area. Pentagon casualty reports
state that on January 2, 28 year-old Captain Eric Paliwoda was killed in
a mortar attack at the 1st Battalion's base.
-
- The prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib is providing the public
with a painful education on the Geneva Conventions. To that lesson we can
add the story of how people are rounded up and homes destroyed in places
like Abu Siffa-both violate the Conventions' prohibition against "collective
penalties."
- -----
- Ferner returned to Iraq this year for two months to write
on developments since his trip with Voices in the Wilderness, just prior
to the war in February, 2003. He served as a Navy Hospital Corpsman during
Viet Nam, is a member of Veterans for Peace and a former member of Toledo
City Council.
-
- © 2004 by Mike Ferner
- -----
- Reader Comment
- Re: Mike Ferner: 'On their way to Abu Ghraib' (Score:
1)
- by scotianova on Thursday, June 17 @ 10:50:53 EDT
-
- Oh, I remember Nat Sassaman -- he's the one who famously
told a reporter for the NYT last December:
-
- "With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot
of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are
here to help them."
-
- http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=16628&mode=nested&order=0
|