Missing in action
Caught in the crosshairs of jittery soldiers, Iraqi civilians are feeling the full force of occupation, writes Nyier Abdou
Around 10.30pm on 26 June, 12-year-old Mohamed Sobhi Hassan Al-Qubaisi was hauling bedding up to the roof, as he did every evening, as he and his brothers preferred to sleep there. By 11pm Mohamed was dead in the back of a neighbour's car.
Pausing on the steps to look at US soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division conducting searches in the neighbourhood, Mohamed was shot by a soldier. One Iraqi who witnessed the event told researchers from the London-based human rights watchdog Amnesty International that when he saw the soldier aim his gun, he cautioned him that the boy was carrying what looked like a baby. The soldier reportedly replied that it was "no baby" and shot the boy.
Mohamed initially survived, his parents say. As soldiers burst into the house to search it, two neighbours put Mohamed in a car and headed for the local hospital -- less than a 10-minute drive. But they found the road blocked by an impromptu checkpoint. Soldiers barred the car from advancing, instead detaining the neighbours, who were made to lie face down on the ground. After about 15 minutes, the neighbours were sent home because the 11pm curfew was now in effect. Mohamed was dead.
The military, which questioned witnesses two weeks later, did not conduct an investigation. Researchers from the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) were told simply: "The kid had an AK-47 on the steps". The family was offered $500 to cover funeral expenses.
Found in Amnesty International's July "Memorandum on Concerns Relating to Law and Order", the case study of Mohamed Al-Qubaisi also appears among the 18 "legally questionable" civilian deaths detailed by HRW in its report "Hearts and Minds: Post-war Civilian Deaths in Baghdad Caused by US Forces", issued last week. The group says it has confirmed 20 such deaths between 1 May (when major combat operations in Iraq were declared over) and 30 September, and estimates the number of civilian deaths caused by the US military in "questionable circumstances" to be 94. Failing to adequately investigate these deaths, says HRW, is one way the US-led coalition is losing the peace in Iraq.
Fred Abrahams, who authored the HRW report, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the most important thing that Iraqis want to see is that the US "cares about them and their country". Many seem to realise, Abrahams suggests, that "accidents happen and civilians get killed". It's what comes after that is the problem. "They would welcome active and aggressive investigations as a sign that the military and the United States considers their well-being a priority. The lack of concern is a sign of the military's indifference."
During its mission in Iraq in July, Amnesty International submitted its memorandum to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), asking them to investigate several incidents of reported human rights violations by US soldiers. But while the CPA is "certainly aware" of the group's recommendations, Amnesty spokeswoman Nicole Choueiry told the Weekly, "allegations of torture and death in custody continue, while there has been no independent and public investigation".
CPA regulations prevent any coalition soldier from being tried by Iraqi courts, meaning that the responsibility to pursue justice falls solely on the military. But only five investigations into unlawful killings have been acknowledged by the military. All but one of these found that the soldiers had acted within the so-called rules of engagement. Both Amnesty and HRW say their investigations in a number of cases have found strong evidence to indicate otherwise.
Curt Goering, deputy executive director of Amnesty International, USA, insists that more public investigations into alleged violations are crucial. Goering, who worked on Amnesty's July report, notes that the cursory assessments by the military are empty gestures. "They need to go further -- to prosecute, hold accountable and punish those found responsible for perpetrating these violations. So far there seems to be very little political will to do this."
Surprisingly, the US military does not keep records of civilian deaths, telling HRW that it is "impossible to maintain an accurate count". However a number of independent groups have been working to do just that, by closely following media reports and following up on incidents whenever possible. The Iraq Occupation Watch Centre, established in Baghdad in July by a coalition of US peace groups, highlights individual cases and helps victims' family members to pressure US authorities about fair procedures for compensation. An online project known as the Iraq Body Count (IBC) has also been meticulously gathering and cross- referencing data on civilian deaths from media reports.
"If it is true that the US and UK are concerned about minimising civilian casualties and are doing everything they can to reduce the number of innocents killed, then it is indeed astonishing that they make no effort to measure their actual performance," remarked Hamit Dardagan, co- founder and principal researcher for IBC. "It's not a question of complete and perfect measurement -- it's a question of collecting, collating and analysing the data that is available." A surprising amount can be done, says Dardagan, "with minimal resources and information in the public domain".
Jack Vahan Bournazian, a US attorney and human rights activist, was in Baghdad in September to help the International Occupation Watch investigate victims' legal claims. He told the Weekly that although the military is not maintaining a record of civilian deaths per se, they do have "intake forms", which detail any claim for compensation made by an Iraqi family. "If the surviving family members of a victim file a claim," says Bournazian, "then that creates a de facto record of the death." If the military "wanted to do so," he concluded, "it could sort through these claims and count how many claims pertain to a civilian death. Maybe we should suggest that they do this."
While the US military is obviously not targeting civilians, researchers warn that Iraqi perceptions of the coalition forces and the occupation are being drastically coloured by increasing incidents of invasive searches, wrongful detentions and civilian deaths, which most commonly occur during raids or at checkpoints. There have also been isolated incidents, like the demonstrations in Al-Falluja on 28 and 30 April, where a total of 20 people died and almost 90 were injured when troops opened fire after allegedly coming under attack from gunmen in the crowd. Because these situations are almost always determined to be within the "rules of engagement", coalition forces are seen by locals to be above the law.
"In the only investigations I heard about in Baghdad, the rules of engagement seemed to be flexible enough to cover almost anything," remarked Susan Harvie, a Canadian human rights researcher who worked with the International Occupation Watch Centre in Baghdad. "I was given to understand that as long as troops thought they were under fire, the rules of engagement defined the situation as a 'combat situation' and any deaths, including civilians, were considered to be acceptable."
In Baghdad, Attorney Jack Bournazian assisted elderly Antoine Hanna Nouraddin to file a claim with the military regarding the killing of his son, Mazen Nouraddin. On 29 June, Mazen was waiting for a taxi on a main road near his house when he was gunned down by US forces, who said he was holding a gun. His body was taken to the airport, where his father waited for hours before he was told he could take the body home -- in a taxi. Insisting he could not find a taxi in that area, the soldiers agreed to take him back, but tried to drop him off, with the body, outside his neighbourhood. When Antoine maintained he could not carry the body eight blocks, the soldiers made the 72- year-old man -- still in his pyjamas from the morning -- run in front of the jeep.
In his testimony, Antoine Nouraddin insisted: "I have the impression that the soldiers were afraid to return to our neighbourhood because they knew that they had killed an innocent person."
Later, the army gave a different excuse for the shooting, saying that Mazen had been in a car from which the troops had come under fire. But Bournazian notes that the evidence showed Mazen had never been in a car before being shot. "If the army is not even concerned about contradicting itself in its own representations, then the implication is that it is not worried about being held accountable for wrongdoing," he said. "Since attacks on US troops have increased, it is my impression that the troops are nervous and more apt to shoot first and ask questions later."
Most of the incidents in HRW's report involve the 82nd Airborne Division and the 1st Armoured Division, both combat arms divisions of the US Army. A combat soldier is trained to stay alive, to shoot first, think later, and to keep his fellow soldiers alive. This mentality is brutally efficient in the theatre of war, but is grossly inappropriate in the realm of peace-keeping. It is difficult, if not impossible, however, to unlearn this mentality while keeping a soldier in a conflict area where he remains under attack.
The fact that combat arms soldiers are being asked to perform what are essentially policing duties means that troops who will instinctively resort to a lethal use of force are being asked to interact delicately with a civilian population that they are both isolated from and cannot trust.
"Here you are with an army that knows nothing about the culture of the country it is supposed to 'liberate', that can't speak its language or respect its customs or traditions," Amnesty's Choueiry suggested. Now throw into the mix "weapons that are totally inappropriate for policing situations". The result is often a disproportionate or indiscriminate use of force resulting in civilian casualties.
"They are neither trained nor equipped to deal with these situations," Amnesty's Goering agreed. "Many are young, inexperienced and scared." He added that Amnesty's discussions with coalition forces in July indicated that the problem was well known. "But now, three months later, one sees little improvement in this situation on the ground," he said.
Knowledge is the best way to avoid an undesirable situation, but for security reasons, the US military does not publicise its rules of engagement. Many fatal incidents seem to be born of tragic misunderstandings that might have been averted if locals were better informed on how to prevent being caught in a fluid situation such as the outbreak of shooting or encountering a checkpoint they had not known was there. But virtually everyone working on this issue who spoke with the Weekly insisted there was no concerted effort to guide the population towards avoiding confrontations with the military.
"Iraqis have a right to know how they are expected to behave," said HRW's Abrahams. "They should know how to avoid walking into their own death." Noting that the military claims to have conducted public service campaigns, Abrahams said that the Iraqis he spoke with had no idea about any such campaign. "In general, it seems the public relations wing of the occupation is very poor," he concluded.
"Whatever the US military is doing to inform the local population on how they should act to avoid being targeted in these situations -- if it is done at all -- does not appear to be working," Amnesty's Goering said. "Certainly there are measures the coalition could take so that local people were not completely taken by surprise when a roadblock was set up and they had little or no chance to slow down or stop before being shot at."
As more Iraqis lose those close to them at the hands of US troops, argues Bournazian, more and more people who were "sitting on the fence" about the US-led occupation will come down on the side of resistance. Bad peace-keeping, in other words, is bad for the US, and blame, human rights groups are quick to point out, travels right to the top of the chain of command.
"I think in focussing on the shortcomings of US and coalition soldiers, we all too easily forget that the responsibility for the deaths of innocents in Iraq is not diffused at the bottom -- at the often harsh and dangerous street level of the ordinary soldier," IBC researcher Hamit Dardagan said. "It is concentrated at the top -- in the air- conditioned corridors of power in Washington and London. It is there, I think, where a culture of impunity has truly taken hold, and it is there where we must ensure, as vigilant citizens, that no official, no matter how high-placed, 'gets away with murder' -- or, to be more exact, mass murder."
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 30 October - 5 November 2003 (Issue No. 662)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/662/re10.htm