For more than an hour Siham al-Tamimi has been waiting in a field marked ”holding area” at the entrance to an American military base. A forlorn figure, she is dressed in black, her hands in small black gloves neatly clasped together.
Siham has come, like so many others before her, to the headquarters of the Second Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division in south-western Baghdad to understand why American soldiers shot dead her husband 12 days earlier.
In the months since the United States’s war in Iraq, an uncounted number of ordinary Iraqis have been killed or maimed by the army that boasts daily of its swift ”liberation” victory. The US military has not punished any soldier for shooting an unarmed civilian and refuses even to keep count of the civilians its soldiers kill.
Yet for several months now, US officers have been quietly paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to relatives of the dead and injured, offering polite but carefully-worded condolences and promising investigations that lead nowhere.
In a recent report Human Rights Watch concluded that ”US soldiers at present operate with virtual impunity in Iraq” and accused them of over-aggressive tactics, indiscriminate shooting and a quick reliance on lethal force. It found that the US military was not doing enough ”to minimise harm to civilians as required by international law”. Human Rights Watch collected evidence that the US military killed 94 civilians between May and the end of September in ”questionable circumstances”.
It is a largely unreported toll of death and injury, excused by the army’s broad and secret rules of engagement, but one that has pushed many once-accepting Iraqi families into disgust at their occupiers.
Siham’s case speaks volumes about the arbitrary nature of death in the new Iraq. Her husband, Sami Shakir al-Safar (57), was driving home at 9pm on October 31. In the front seat next to him was Emad (25), the eldest of the couple’s four sons. In the back was the youngest boy, Ammar (11).
Sami, a physicist, took his usual route past the al-Dorah police station. On the roof of the station house was a team of US soldiers manning an observation post. Without warning the car came under fire. Two bullets hit Sami. Another bullet hit Emad, badly wounding him and lodging four pieces of shrapnel in his diaphragm.
”We didn’t hear anything before the shooting started,” said Ammar, who survived unhurt. ”Suddenly we heard a lot of shooting aimed at us. It broke the windshield and hit my father and then it hit Emad.”
Sami managed to drive for a few minutes more before he collapsed over the wheel. Emad, although badly wounded, took over and drove home.
Shortly after midnight Sami died in hospital. Emad survived and is resting at his uncle’s house because his family have not dared tell him his father is dead. No US soldier has come to the house to account for the shooting.
First Lieutenant Rafid Azideen, the Iraqi police officer at al-Dorah police station who is investigating the case, said he believes the family was mistakenly targeted and US soldiers fired the lethal shots.
Five mortars were fired at the police station minutes before the shooting, he said. Sami was driving from the approximate direction from which the shells were launched and that may have encouraged the Americans to shoot.
Azideen has a large file with witness statements on the case and a piece from one of the bullets, which he will send for testing. But he holds out little hope of the case proceeding through the Iraqi courts.
He digs out a note written about a similar case in which the local judge said he was powerless to rule on a case against the US military. Order number 17 imposed this year by the Coalition Provision Authority, the US-led civil administration, grants the ”coalition forces” immunity from Iraqi courts.
Back at the 82nd Airborne’s base Siham is eventually taken inside to meet Captain Patrick Murphy, the prosecutor for the Second Brigade. He asks for sworn witness statements and promises that his own investigation will follow. ”We have been very responsive to people’s claims,” he says. ”But there are two sides to every story.”
More than 900 claims have been filed with the brigade. Since July, Murphy has paid out an astonishing $106 000 in 176 different cases. Payments are given for damage to cars and houses, injury and death. The money usually covers little more than the cost of the traditional three-day funeral ceremony. Only rarely does the army admit any liability.
Helping Siham with her case is Faiz Alwasity, who works for an aid group, the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, which has won assistance for civilian victims of US military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is deeply distressed by what he has seen.
”This hurts a lot. I know the American soldiers are not inhumane because I saw them when they first came and they behaved well,” he said. ”But now they have changed and I don’t know why. They are becoming more aggressive, maybe because they are frightened. I am afraid this is creating more resistance against them.”
Privately, senior US officers say the rules of engagement are so broad that troops know they will not face punishment even if civilians are accidentally killed. In the face of mounting guerrilla insurgency, commanders have gone to great lengths to defend their soldiers’ aggressive conduct. Major General Chuck Swannack, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, has heaped praise on his men. ”At one moment they are a warrior and the next they are the most compassionate individual on the face of the Earth.”
Yet the view from so many Iraqi families is disturbingly different. In some cases grief has spilled over into anger and threats of revenge. On October 24 Mohammad Kahdum al-Jurani was driving home with his wife and their three young daughters. As they drove down a highway, a US Abrams tank drove out across the lanes of traffic and crushed their car. Mohammad and his wife were killed.
A police investigation has confirmed the family’s account of the incident. Sergeant Ali Tariq was at the scene as the bodies were pulled from the car. He believes the incident was triggered when a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at a tank near the highway. A second tank raced over to help, bursting through the metal crash barrier and straight over the family’s car.
Mohammad’s son Uday (31) is left to care for his three sisters. Again, no US soldier has been to the house to account for the deaths. ”We were hoping a big change would come to Iraq and that things would be better,” said Uday.
He talks quietly, but only just holds back a fierce and mounting anger. ”Now I am thinking of some kind of revenge. The Americans know very well they made a big mistake and killed innocent people but they didn’t even come to apologise. I am not going to stay silent.”
Such anger is common and little eased by the condolences reluctantly offered and the money paid out by the military.
In Aadhamiya, a northern suburb of Baghdad, Faiz has helped another family secure a payment.
Adil Abdul Karim al-Kawaz, his son and two of his three daughters were shot dead by a US unit as they drove down the road leading from their house. The unit had been called into the area on August 7 and had positioned their vehicles at one end of the street as part of an operation. There was no checkpoint and no warning before the car was riddled with bullets. Only Adil’s wife Anwar and one of her daughters survived.
After weeks of negotiations with the US military, the local council and a sheikh from the mosque, Anwar eventually received an $11 000 payment. The military asked her to sign a document giving up her rights to future legal action but she refused.
She guards the receipt she was given. It describes the money as a ”Solatia payment from Cerp”, meaning no liability was admitted and that the money came from the local commander’s discretionary funds, the Commanders’ Emergency Response Programme. The receipt shows the money was ordered by a Captain Casey Doyle and paid out by a Captain Robert Brewer.
In Anwar’s case, the payout appears to have fuelled her resentment. ”They said there was no mistake, just that it was their bad luck that they were driving there at the time,” she said. ”What kind of logic is that? They killed our family. Even if I was to receive a lot of money it is not going to compensate for the souls of my family.
”But if the same incident had happened in America how would they behave and what kind of compensation would they pay for an innocent family? Is this what a human being in Iraq is worth?” — Â