LIFE UNDER SANCTIONS IN IRAQ
Upon our team's arrival in Basra, I met Hani, one of our hosts, a proud Iraqi man, soon to become a protective "Baba" figure for me. Hani fixes telephones by trade, but under sanctions, telephones are rare, though they were previously commonplace. So Hani has expanded his repairing to include most household fixtures.
Hani took me to meet his family in Al Jumhuriyah, an extremely poor district of Basra, where our team has been graciously welcomed for a two-month visit. One of Hani's daughters, Noora, is a beautiful little shy-but-playful girl. She became my new friend at once. Noora has already left an indelible mark in my mind and heart of the forgiveness of the Iraqi people for those of us just arrived from the country whose policy of sanctions ignores all but one Iraqi--the President.
In Hani's meager three -room home, with plastered walls crumbling, he points out each of his seven children, his wife, his son's wife and children, and then a large framed picture on the wall. In his broken English he says, "This is Hudah, age 8 and Hibeh, age 4." I saw two precious dark-haired girls smiling in the picture. The room grew quiet. Hani then pointed to a 3 x 3 foot hole in the living room ceiling, now patched with scraps of metal. "On March 23, 1991, this is where my girls were killed when a bomb came through our house." I stammered out an inadequate "ana asif" ("I'm sorry"). I said that I hoped to convey the Iraqis' experiences to Americans. I said that our team had come to live on these streets to help get their story out.
These streets do reflect the sanctions. Last night, I helped little Noora take out the household trash. She led me around the corner and threw the trash into a huge pile in the middle of the street. A similar mound can be found on every block here. Noora explained to me in sign language that a truck comes to push it away sometimes. The stench and thickness of the pile spoke for itself, but I learned that it is only once per month that these families see removal of the waste.
Before sanctions left the city's trucks broken down with no replacement parts allowed from the UN's "Committee 661," these families enjoyed daily sweeping, spraying, and dumpster removal on their streets. Now, I see harried, gaunt people picking through the trash, and women washing their dishes in the street water-even with all this filth.
Yet somehow Noora still takes my hand and begins to skip back home. We run and laugh, then secretly make faces at each other when it is time to sleep (with the family on one big mat on the living room floor).
This girl with the sparkling eyes, was only two when the US bomb ripped through her home and took her sisters. She does not know that our groups go to prison in the US because we protest the making and dropping of these bombs. She does not know I spent 30 days in maximum security prison, with children like her in mind. She does know that I come from a country that is strangling hers with sanctions. And yet somehow she is flirting me into a new card game, dancing, and singing.
And so we skip together down these once clean streets, Noora and I, looking into each other's eyes, and I align myself again with my hope to be a voice for her, and for all these forgotten faces behind the US-led sanctions against Iraq.
Trapped by intense heat, thick smog shrouded the city center today. Lisa Gizzi and I felt as though we were chewing the air when we walked through an unkempt section of the main market. The grim determination we saw on so many faces masked, we knew, an intense weariness. There were two small children in the market who shyly called "Hello" from the street, then skipped away when I replied.
It's remarkable that Basrans maintain hope and preserve their intellectual heritage and abilities as they struggle against the chaos wrought by increasing deprivation. Miraculously, in spite of the troubles created by the sanctions and bombardment, they raise radiant, gleeful children. Those gleaming eyes and wide smiles greet us as children sitting at the roadside say "Hello" and then scoop water from a drainage ditch to quench their thirst. We try to dissemble our shock as we meet. Later in the day, two members of my host family pick up the copy of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, which I'm reading for the first time, and tell me how much they enjoyed reading it years ago. Just imagine it-- by candlelight, because electricity was cut much earlier in the day. We discuss Tolstoy's vision of land reform and then Gandhi's principles of nonviolence.
This evening I walked with Nadra, my very dear and impeccably tidy host, to empty the waste baskets at the garbage dump, the intersection of our street. The trash piles up, mixed with sewage, and there simply are no trucks to pick it all up. Forbidden by sanctions, the trucks might have a military purpose. They might be "dual use."
Summer in Basra--nightmare fears leaping into the everyday lives of innocents who've already endured close to two decades of military and economic warfare. Summer in Basra--a world of imprisoned beauty where we feel no threat. Who does Iraq threaten? Let's be honest. Iraq threatens the US ability to control Iraq's precious and irreplaceable resources.
It is 7:00 a.m. in Basra, and sweat is already pouring out of our bodies. This may be our hottest day yet. I am writing from the roof where my host family and I sleep on thin mats, benefiting from occasional Gulf breezes. Nadra, my new Mom and Arabic coach, stated with frightening conviction that today would indeed be hot and "rotubah"--humid. It's 7:00 and already 120º in the shade.
No strangers to the heat of a Basra summer, the women wear both the hijab and abia, so they show only their hands and faces. Still it is we who are sweating profusely, even with our heads uncovered! We cut up our wash cloths, turning them into sweat rags, and dream of tank tops.
The intensity of the sun and heat prompts an afternoon shutdown of business. A nap is traditional between 2 and 4 p.m. When business resumes, our team is still unable to fax our reports, or phone the US media-the lines are down. There are only a few hours per day when international calls can get out. Internet service is nonexistent for the public in most of Iraq, and certainly in Basra.
All of Iraq's power grid (and most of its water treatment system) was targeted and bombed during the Gulf War. And now, ten years later, replacement parts are still being held up by the UN's "Committee 661" as "dual use." So the government here has to ration electricity and even water p; with less and less available every day as the plants progressively degenerate. The sanctions are making sure that the devastation begun with the bombing inexorably, increasingly, kills the people here. Basra has a few factories which receive priority for electricity during the day, and power is restored to our streets for just a few hours most evenings.
These families we stay with cannot afford air coolers, even where there is power to run them. But the daily power outage deprives them even of fans. And other things. Children get heat rash routinely. Food spoils. People have to adapt to life in the dark. But we also see how children play in these streets when the TV cuts out. We witness tremendous creativity under siege.
Midway through our Arabic lesson each morning, when the ceiling fan slows to a halt, and power goes, we let out a collective gasp, and begin to sweat-if possible-even more profusely. We should have taken our pre-Basra weights to measure our shedding under the sanctions! We eat only the contents of the United Nations "oil-for-food" family ration, which means lentils, rice, salt, sugar, flour and some weak tea. We drink the chai, and make chubuz--the flat bread--with hosts who are unfailingly gracious. Our group did come armed with our privilege: packets of "Emergen-C" to keep ourselves fortified in this heat. Yet we see how easily children become ill, subsisting on the deficient ration. Immunities are lowered, and that means death in streets filled with garbage and raw sewage.
We are constantly invited to homes to drink chai, try a creative new cake (made with the flour ration), and take a shower. Women try to take my sweaty clothes to wash them for me. Only occasionally am I asked an exasperated, "Why does the US want to kill our children?"
We talk of a decade of sanctions that has followed a decade of war with Iran. There is no doubt among Basrans as to who is responsible for the sanctions. They remind us that China and Russia have expressed disapproval of the USp;led policy in the Security Council. They know well that the US and UK manipulate their daily life. And so, to their questions of "Why . . .?" I am ashamed, and can only answer with my shared outrage and resolve to voice their stories in the US.
We think of the perseverance of parents like Majid and Carema, who have lost all their material possessions to the sanctions, but retain their dignity. While we visit their one-room home with their 6 children, they do not complain. We see glimpses of despair and humiliation, but mostly we see courage and creativity.
Well, now the power is off again. And now we have only our humor to offer. And just now, we have all given a salute in unison, looking up at the fan
--Lauren Cannon and others from VOICES IN THE WILDERNESS went to live with families in Basra, Iraq, in a two-month "cultural immersion," sharing Iraqi lives--and death--under sanctions and bombings.
--Voices in the Wilderness has sent over 25 delegations to Iraq in violation of US law. The US continues to bomb in Iraq's "no-fly zones" on an average of once every three to five days. UNICEF and other agencies estimate 4,500 Iraqis die each month as a result of the embargo.
--VOICES IN THE WILDERNESS, 1460 West Carmen Avenue, Chicago IL 60640, ph: 773-784-8065, fax: (773) 784-8837, <kkelly@igc.org>, <www.nonviolence.org/vitw >