Volume 6 number 3, March 2004 Baghdad Dispatches: Water and Health The following articles and photographs are by Dahr Jamail, an Anchorage freelance journalist and political activist who spent nine weeks in Iraq during December and January. He sent almost daily dispatches to The Ester Republic and recently gave a presentation at the University of Alaska Fairbanks on his time there, and will be returning to the Middle East later this month. The articles published below are selected from these dispatches, arranged chronologically, and deal with similar themes of water quality, health care, and pollution. A list of websites for more on-the-ground information about the situation in Iraq follows the article. Lakes of Sewage in the Streets BAGHDAD, 17 January 2004 Ahmed Abdul Rida points to his tiny, dilapidated water pump which sits quietly on the ground in his small home in Sadr City, Baghdad. “We have one hour of electricity, then none for eight hours. This pump is all we have to try to pull some water to our home,” he tells me. “So whenever we get some electricity we try to collect what water we can in this bowl.” He points to an empty metal bowl that sits near the lifeless pump. When they do get water, most of the time it is brown water from the Tigris. The volume of flow from the Tigris, due to all of the dams upriver from Baghdad, has dropped from 40 billion cubic meters in the 1960s to 16 billion cubic meters today. So the water Ahmed gets for his two and a half hours a day of electricity is a concentrated cocktail of pesticides, fertilizers, heavy metals from ancient piping, and who knows how much depleted uranium, raw sewage, and other chemicals released from American and Iraqi munitions from the ’91 Gulf War, and the more recent Anglo-American Invasion. He points to a bottle of the last water they collected to show me a sample of what his family has to drink. It has the color of watered-down iced tea and smells like a dirty sock. No wonder he and his family are constantly plagued by diarrhea, with many of them suffering from kidney stones. Yet these are just the most obvious effects the families in Sadr City who drink the polluted/contaminated water suffer, for heavy metals in their water also damage the liver, brain, and other internal organs. All of the houses I visited today in Sadr City had the same problems—little or no electricity, no running water aside from two or three hours a day of the brown smelly liquid that sputters from their pipes when their small pumps function, and raw sewage outside in the streets where the children are playing. This was on a good day. The last rain was several days ago, and not a big one at that. Ahmed tells me, as do several of the other men I spoke with throughout the poverty-stricken area, that during most rain showers there are literally lakes of raw sewage that fill the streets and the nearby homes. Geographically, Sadr City is a low point in the region, so most of the water flows towards it, carrying garbage and raw sewage when the rains come. We walk outside and toward another home to see their dismal pipe situation. On the way, children are playing catch with an old piece of black rubber (from a tire?) until it lands in the greenish water standing on the side of the small road between the two houses. A little girl with dirt-smeared arms picks up their toy and tosses it back to her friend as sewage drips off it. “Our children are always sick here. We have tried picking up areas so they have somewhere clean to play, but people always throw their garbage there anyway. The government hasn’t done anything to help us yet, and we have asked them,” a neighbor of Ahmed’s tells me. He goes on to say that they pay the government the monthly electrical bill, even though they lack potable water and average 2.5 hours of electricity per day. There is no sewage system, and pools of it are standing throughout the neighborhood. The stench makes me pull my kefir up over my nose at times. We walk to the end of a street where a large pond of greenish sewage stands, flies buzzing madly about. Ahmed says to me, “The whole area is like this. We have over a million people here, and all of us suffer. Sometimes we have to drink the sewage. Yesterday our water smelled like petrol, because there is a station nearby and we all know the benzene leaks into our water.” I drive to another block of Sadr City and get the same news from residents there. Constant diarrhea, nausea, and oftentimes kidney stones. The usual green and brown streams of sewage line the street, with children walking across it. As I walk back towards the car a man tells me, “Nobody from the Council (the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council) cares about us here. We hear that companies are coming here to rebuild, but we haven’t seen anything rebuilt. We know they only came for the oil. Our situation hasn’t changed one bit since the Americans arrived here. We are still suffering just as we did under Saddam. But now it is worse because there are fewer jobs, and it is even more dangerous for us.” Bechtel signed their infrastructure repair/rehabilitation contract on April 17, 2003. One of the agreements of this contract states that Bechtel is to repair or rehabilitate critical water treatment, pumping, and distribution in fifteen urban areas in central and southern Iraq within the first six months. Sadr City, obviously, is not too high on their priority list.
“Who will give us back our health?” AL-TUETHA, 21 January 2004 Back in the 1980s, nuclear armed Israel carried out a preemptive bombing of Iraq’s Al-Tuetha nuclear power station which is located just south of Baghdad. While Saddam Hussein didnít posses nuclear weapons, his nuclear power station which was being constructed still had much radioactive waste stored in two large warehouses. The waste, stored mostly in large metal drums, sat dormant for many years. After the Anglo-American Invasion last spring the warehouses were looted, and many of the barrels containing radioactive material were carted away to be washed out in the small stream which separates the tiny rural village from Al-Tuetha. After being cleaned in the water supply for the area, the barrels were then sold to uneducated people in the village to be used for storing their drinking water. Thus, the water and now food of the entire village is contaminated with radioactive material. The health problems experienced by the people in the village are too numerous to track. Stories abound of strange tumors, rashes and illnesses. I had come here today to visit a family with a baby who was born with a huge tumor growing out of his back, caused by his mother being radiated by the village drinking water and probably by eating contaminated food as well. The baby had since died from cancer, and the father was away at work in the village, which has over seventy percent unemployment. Just outside of this home, a man drives up in a beat-up old maroon Volkswagen Beetle, and asks us if he can help with anything. Adel Mhomoud, a forty-four-year-old beekeeper, invites us to his home. Driving down the bumpy dirt road, dust swirls about the beautiful rural countryside. Vegetable fields are lined with palm trees and small modest homes dot the area. To our right, just a stone’s throw away, is the bombed-out Al-Tuetha nuclear station, now guarded by a few American soldiers, who weren’t there to stop the looting in April. I wonder why they guard it now, too little, and most certainly too late. A small, dirty stream which is the contaminated water source for the village runs between the dirt road and the fence of the nuclear storage buildings. The stream is the only water in this area. After several minutes Adel pulls over near his house, and limps over to greet us into his home. “I have cancer, and I know I’m dying. My white blood cell count is 14,000, and I don’t have enough red blood cells. We are all sick; our joints ache, my hips are killing me, and my blood is bad. But nobody will help us here.” He has had hundreds of reporters come to record his story. He asked many of them to take samples of his honey to test for radiation, but nobody has returned the results to him. We follow the kind and soft-spoken man down a dirt path lined with palm trees to where he keeps his bees. As we pass his home we see stacks of white bee boxes on his porch, dusty and unused. We stand in the sun under the palms, talking. Adel tells us he used to keep 300 boxes of bees, and now he is down to 70, and each of these is only half full, with lethargic bees. “Right after the invasion my bees went crazy. I never saw them so aggressive and strong in twenty years; this was when they were first contaminated. Then shortly after that they all began to die, and now this is all I have left, and as you can see they are very weak. I don’t think they will live until the spring.” He puts on his protective head cover and pulls out a tray about thirty percent covered with bees. Several begin to lazily fly about. His bees used to produce one ton of honey per year. Now, they have yet to produce enough for him to take to market. Adel has a wife and two daughters, fourteen and nineteen years old. He fought in the Iraq/Iran War, and pulls up his leg to show me several gashes and indentations from injuries sustained. “Everyone here is hurt or sick from something. You can see this in the village. Our water, land, food, and now all the people—we are all contaminated.” One of his young dogs died recently. He thanks us for writing a story and filming a documentary about his situation. He wants the truth to get out about the plight of his family, his friends, his village. He says, “I welcome anyone who comes to tell the truth—it will help us sleep better at night.” I apologize to him meekly for his situation. I tell him I hope people will read or watch his story, and try to help him and his people in some way. My friend asks Adel what he will do about his situation—is there anything else he can do, or that we can do to help him? Adel says, “We are all going to die. It just depends on if you are killed, or if you die naturally.” We stand talking with his family awhile as he shows us his loom. His wife brings out a handmade carpet and he offers it to us as a gift, and invites us back to his home anytime, Insh’allah (if God wills it). Insh’allah, Adel. Insh’allah...
Baghdad to Babylon 26 January 2004 The last two days found me traveling to the south to collect data on a report on the water infrastructure, as well as an attempt to visit Babylon. My traveling companion was an American photographer, Max Whittaker, and ever-trusted Hamoudi, our ace driver and interpreter. Driving south we pass several destroyed Iraqi tanks. We stop to photograph them, and two Iraqi men are hammering off scraps of the metal. We tell them they have been hit with depleted uranium and are very poisonous—but the men continue with their work anyhow. We stopped in several villages along the way en route to Hilla, Najaf, and Diwaniyah to check on people’s drinking water situation, as these all lie within the area which Bechtel is responsible for improving water supplies and quality. Most of the water information I obtained will come out later in a report, so only bits will be included here. This is basically a diary of a frenetic two-day road trip. But this first little village just outside of Hilla, found us amidst fields and palm trees, and people asking us for help. This set the tone of the entire trip. An old man with a weathered face shows us his scrappy water pump, sitting lifeless with an empty container nearby as there was no electricity. What water they did have was loaded with salt from the region, and was making everyone sick—nausea, diarrhea, kidney stones, cramps, and cholera. This too would be a steady trend for the villages we visited. Aside from the desperate water situation, the man asks us if we can help him find his cousin. He pleads to us, “He was in the Iraqi Army and has been missing since the invasion. We just want to know if he’s dead, so we can bury the body. Can you help us?” We give him information for an NGO that may be able to help him in Baghdad, and then found our way to occupied Babylon. We failed to meet up with Jo Wilding and her traveling circus, who were going to let us be their photographers so as to get into Babylon. See, it’s now the Polish base, as well as that of other countries. So the cradle of civilization is now encircled with spiraling razor wire, sandbags, guard towards, and heavily fortified checkpoints. As we are entering, a convoy of ten Kuwaiti fuel trucks driven by overweight Anglo men wearing flack jackets and helmets passes us. They are escorted by two Humvees. Each truck has a sign on it that says, ‘KBR owned asset’. Another of the trucks pulling a tank of petrol has a sign on it that says, ‘First Kuwaiti Construction Company.’ The last word I got was that these truck drivers started out making $125,000 US per year. They won’t hire Iraqis because they don’t trust them. After not finding our friends, we go on in to check out the press conference for the new Polish general taking the reigns of this area, Major General Miecyslaw Bieniak. Inside a large tent with cookies and cakes, we listen to the usual prattle about how they “are here to help the Iraqi people,” and to please stay out of the way of the convoys. Just yesterday an Iraqi family was killed by getting in the way of a convoy. When asked about this, one of the Polish soldiers said, and I quote, “Accidents happen.” When the general was asked about having free elections in Iraq, he looked down and had the body language of someone who was punched in the stomach. He paused and then gave the usual answer of when security permits, when the UN thinks it is best, when the CPA feels it is best, and more of the usual lines. He continually went out of his way to say, “This is not a military operation, it is a political mission first, THEN a military operation.” Hamoudi was pissed because the general didn’t even pronounce Iraq properly. Needless to say, we weren’t allowed to visit Babylon. So close but so far. You have to pre-arrange it with a military escort—which entails driving to the camp, putting your name on a list, then coming back at that time and maybe you’ll get in. Why is this historically significant area now an ugly military camp? As per most other areas in Iraq, one of Saddam’s palaces on a hill overlooking the area is now being used by the military. A large explosion is heard in the distance as we walk back to the brand new Tacoma we were driven in with. It sits in a parking lot full of Humvees and other brand new Suburbans and Tacomas, each with signs on the windshields that say ‘KBR vehicle number—’, as if it wasn’t obvious. We pull out of the parking area and pass a small tent with a sign that reads, ‘AT&T Salutes the Armed Forces. Call home now!’ Chevy, Ford, AT&T, KBR, Halliburton, Bechtel, and how many other countless multinationals are cashing in on the destruction of Iraq? Back out of the razor wire and weaving past the suicide-bomber barriers, past the Iraqi man with the badge that says, ‘KBR-HCR Subcontract Labor’, and a Polish soldier sitting behind a bunker with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Hamoudi tells us just two months ago there was only one checkpoint outside the base, now there are three. But I never got searched. We carry on towards Najaf, passing several Humvees full of soldiers from El Salvador, while Max and I give Hamoudi a quick rundown of the irony of having Central American soldiers in Iraq ‘helping’ the US, after what the US government has done to so many countries in Central America, primarily in the 1980s.
Water, Sickness, and a Brewing Storm 26 January 2004 The rest of our trip was comprised of a frenetic tour of stopping by villages both near and inside the city limits of Hilla, Najaf, and Diwaniya. Hilla, right near Babylon, has a water treatment plant and distribution center that is managed by Salmam Hassan Kadel, who is also the chief engineer. The wastewater project here, like in Najaf and Diwaniya, is specifically named on Bechtel’s contract as one that they are responsible for rehabilitating. Mr. Kadel informed me that he has received help from UNICEF, Red Cross, and several others. He told me that even during the war they had running water in every house, and just had the normal problems of needing to replace old pipes and pumps. Now, they are supplying fifty percent of the water they need for the people of Hilla. The villages have no water, and they don’t have the pipes they need to get the work done. And they have had no contact from Bechtel, or a subcontractor, he said. He tells of massive numbers of people with cholera, diarrhea, nausea, and kidney stones. Mr. Kadel says, “Bechtel is spending all of their money without any studies. We give our NGOs all of our information before they do the work, and they know what to do. Bechtel is painting buildings, but this doesn’t give clean water to the people who have died from drinking contaminated water. We ask of them that instead of painting buildings, they give us one water pump and we’ll use it to give water service to more people. We have had no change since the Americans came here. We know Bechtel is wasting money, but we can’t prove it.” Just outside of Hilla I speak with several men of a small village. It’s the usual story—no running water, maybe two to four hours of electricity per day to run their feeble pumps to pull in contaminated water for them to use. An old man, Hussin Hamsa Nagem, tells me, “This is just like Saddam’s time. In fact, it is worse. We have less water now than before. We are all sick with stomach problems and kidney stones. Our crops are dying.” At another small village between Hilla and Najaf, 1500 people are drinking water from a dirty stream that trickles slowly near their homes. Everyone has dysentery, many have kidney stones, a huge number have cholera. One of the men, holding a sick child, tells me, “It was much better before the invasion. We had twenty-four hours running water then. Now we are drinking this garbage because it is all we have.” A little further down the road at a village of 6000 homes called Abu Hidari, it is more of the same. Here, Saddam was rebuilding the pipes, but this ceased during the invasion and has yet to be resumed. The women are carrying water from a nearby dirty creek into their homes, because again, they have no other option. After a night in Najaf, the next morning finds me at yet another village on the outskirts of Najaf, which falls under the responsibility of Najaf’s water center. Here the people had been proactive in collecting funds from each house to install new pipes. But due to lack of electricity and lack of water from the Najaf water treatment center, they are suffering. A large hole is dug into the ground where they tapped into already existing pipes to siphon water. It fills the dirty hole in the night, when water is collected. This morning, children stand around it as women collect what little bit of dirty water they can that stands in the bottom of the hole. Dysentary, cholera, nausea, diarrhea, kidney stones—everyone is suffering from some water-born illness here, like the rest. Eight children from the village have been killed when attempting to cross the busy highway to a nearby factory in order to retrieve clean water. Women are walking one kilometer down to a stream that dries up in the summer to collect water for their homes. In this same stream other people are washing their dishes and doing laundry. I am told that many children from the village have drowned in this stream while collecting water. After translating for upwards of several hundred men from at least ten different villages in this region south of Baghdad, at one point Hamoudi, with a tired and sad look on his face, said, “I cannot do this work. They are desperate. They are asking me to help, and I can do nothing for these people. I’m very tired.” Mr. Mehdi is an engineer and assistant manager at the Najaf water distribution center. With help from the Red Cross and the Spanish Army, they are doing some of the rebuilding on their own. He tells me Bechtel has begun working on the Arzaga Water Project to help bring water into the city center of Najaf. He says that Bechtel started one month ago: painting buildings, cleaning and repairing storage tanks, and repairing and replacing sand filters. This is the only project he knows of that Bechtel has been working on in Najaf. There has been no work on desalinization, which is critical in this area, or other purification processes. He states, “Bechtel is repairing some water facilities, but not improving the electricity any, which is their responsibility. Their work has not produced any more clean water than what we already had. Bechtel has not spoken with us, or promised us to do anything else.” I ask him if he thinks Bechtel can meet their contractual obligation of restoring potable water supply in all of the urban centers of Iraq by April 17th, and he laughs. I ask him, “How successful has Bechtel been in restoring electrical service to your water facility which depends on electricity to operate?” He tells me at least thirty percent of Najaf doesn’t have clean water simply because of lack of electricity. In Diwaniya, and in each of the five other villages I visited, the story is the same. Change the names of the people and the names of the city or village, and we find cholera, dysentery, diarrhea, nausea, less than eight hours of electricity per day, contaminated water (or no water), and everyone is suffering. All of these people are Shi’ite muslims, those from whom the US hopes to gain the support—those who have been promised the most, and had the most hope for a better life now that they are no longer living in the shadow of Saddam Hussein. These are the people who suffered the most from his regime. I am here to state, unequivocally, that 100 percent of the people I spoke with in this area south of Baghdad have stated that their living conditions are worse now than when Saddam was in power. Mr. Hassan Mehdi Mohammed lives in a small village with his wife and eight children, about an hour’s drive south of Baghdad. His village has eighty percent unemployment. He tells me, “The Americans have come and taken everything but have given us nothing. It is worse than before. We were hoping it would be better than before, but now it is worse. The IGC has forgotten to take care of the Iraqi people.” I ask him what he thinks needs to occur to improve their situation. “First, we need security. But the Americans aren’t even safe themselves. They are killed every day. We like to hear that companies are coming here and we can work for them, but the IGC is always disagreeing amongst themselves. They have done nothing to help. We need free elections, this would be good for the people and give them hope. But we know Mr. Bremer will cheat us with those.” I ask him what he thinks will happen here in the near future. “If we don’t get our elections, there will be a bloody war. I fear a civilian war.” More of his children come sit with us as we drink chai and talk. He continues, “I think the Americans came here because they want something, not just because they love the Iraqi people. If they really came to help, then they should leave quickly. Now we are waiting for the next six months. The longer we wait, the more we see their promises are not being kept.” He takes a sip of chai, thinks for a moment, and says, “No occupation ever makes things good for the people. All the people in the world must know the Americans are here just to help Mr. Bush win this next election. The same people who benefited under Saddam are benefiting more now. And the same people who suffered under Saddam, are suffering even more now.” His brother-in-law, Saduk al Abid, who has joined the discussion, says, “Iraqi people now have no trust in the Americans or the IGC. They have given us one empty promise after another. We can feel the emptiness of all of their promises now.” Both of these men fought in the Intifada against Saddam Hussein in 1991. Now they both lack jobs and are suffering worse than before. Mr. Abid says, “During Saddam’s time we could at least find a job and bring home some money. Now, we cannot.” We drive the rest of the way back to Baghdad and listen to the news of a bus exploded by an IED on the Dora Highway, and three US soldiers missing near Mosul. More Iraqi police are killed in this incident as well. Last night we hear a couple of loud explosions, then listen to the warning sirens wailing from the CPA headquarters in Baghdad as it was once again attacked with rockets. Several Bradley fighting vehicles rumble down the street under my window, and helicopters fly across Baghdad in different directions.
Signing Off AMMAN, JORDAN 31 January 2004 After nine weeks in occupied Iraq, I am en route to home. This will be my last dispatch until I return in March. I would like thank everyone for reading what I’ve been sending. I also want to thank those of you who have taken the time to comment, to support, and to thank me for doing this. There have been so many, most of whom I don’t even know personally. The responses have been overwhelming at times. So often I would be deeply saddened by what I’d witnessed, only to log on and find yet another supportive e-mail. Just a few notes on my departure—the dangerous journey out went fine. No bombs near me, no Ali-Babas (a recent peace delegation was robbed on their way in), and I made it to the border with no problems. The border—while the US Administration continues to tout security, and speak of brining it to Iraq—THE BORDER IS WIDE OPEN! Not one US soldier was at the border on my way in, or yesterday on my way out. So many other journalists I know report the same situation. Why is this? This is a question which must be answered, and I will write my senators (Lisa Murkowski and Ted Stevens, both staunch supporters of this illegal invasion and occupation), so that it can at least be on record. I encourage others to write theirs as well.
For more information on news from the ground in Iraq, the author recommends the following websites: www.electroniciraq.net Dahr Jamail's work can be found on the Internet at numerous websites. Archived editions of his work can be found at the websites above and the following: www.countercurrents.org | ||
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