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On October 23, WikiLeaks made headlines by releasing secret war files on the Iraq war. The classified US military logs confirmed the large number of civilian casualties in Iraq during the US ‘occupation.’ The documents released by WikiLeaks confirmed the concerns expressed by independent observers in Iraq over the years.
Arab journalists, bloggers and human rights activists have reported hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths due to depleted uranium contamination and have also raised their voice against the destruction of dozens of universities during “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
Even though alarm bells regarding war crimes and the number of civilian casualties had gone off much earlier, no one took much notice.
The 77,000 classified documents (made public by WikiLeaks) showed that the actual numbers of civilian deaths was higher than previously claimed. The documents also disclosed deaths at checkpoints and targeted assassinations. The documents reported 109,000 deaths in which 66,081 were innocent civilians. According to Al Jazeera, hundreds of innocent victims were killed at checkpoint firings.
In one such incident US troops open fired on a civilian car carrying eight passengers; six children and two parents. The parents died immediately, while one child was severely injured by a bullet that entered his spine which left him paralysed.
Even the findings published in the prestigious medical journal, “The Lancet” on October 12, 2006 by Gilbert Burnham of John Hopkins Bloomberg University, USA, were ignored.
But civilian casualties were not the only aspect of this war which wasn’t brought to the limelight. The US-led invasion, especially in early 2003, resulted in the cultural death of Iraq, universities destroyed, and hundreds of Iraqi scholars and professors killed.
USA Today and the weekly Nature magazine reported killings and assassinations of scholars, scientists and professors in Iraq after 2003. Dr. Al-Rawi kept records of each of the scholars who were mysteriously killed.
“Al-Rawi, a geologist at Baghdad University and head of the Association of University Lecturers, says about 300 academics and university administrators have been assassinated in a mysterious wave of murders since the American occupation of Iraq began in 2003. About 2,000 others, he says, have fled the country in fear for their lives.”Unfortunately Dr Al-Rawi was also killed on October 2006 in an attack by armed gunmen.
According to a report published in the journal, Science academic buildings and especially science departments at universities were bombed, burned, looted and destroyed.
A UNESCO fact sheet published in March 28, 2003 stated, “The Education system in Iraq, prior to 1991, was one of the best in the region, with over 100 per cent Gross Enrollment Rate for primary schooling and high levels of literacy, both of men and women. The Higher Education, especially the scientific and technological institutions, were of an international standard, staffed by high quality personnel.”
As the infrastructure of education in Iraq was destroyed, it resulted in a cultural cleansing of a country which was the cradle of civilisation. Some 15,000 artifacts were stolen from the Baghdad Museum and so far, only 7,000 pieces have been recovered. One of the major artifacts recovered so far is a chrome-plated AK-47 that belonged to Saddam Hussein, taken by a US soldier as a war trophy. But this wasn’t just it, the history which has shaped the country – has been lost.
There is another dark side to the war in Iraq. The Guardian reported that about 40 sites across Iraq are contaminated with depleted uranium and dioxins, responsible for the sudden rise in birth defects and cancer. An official study concluded that Najaf, Basra and Falluja are most affected areas because of depleted uranium used in ammunition during the first Gulf War and since the 2003 invasion. Iraqi doctors also reported that there were now more than 15 times as many chronic deformities in infants.
But it is a picture of a distressed Iraqi mother, Wafa Hussain that brought tears in my eyes. Her only son was shot dead by stray bullets while he was onboard a school bus.
The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.
