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At
the Checkpoint…**
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US
soldier searches Iraqi schoolgirls at a checkpoint in Baghdad.
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“Why
are you searching our car?” Yasser Anas*, a
57-year-old Iraqi, asked a US soldier at a checkpoint in Al-Dorah in
Baghdad.
“Shut
up,” the soldier replied.
“This
is not a prohibited area. I am not violating the law. I am here just
to drop my friend over there. I’ll be back in two minutes.”
“Don’t
talk with me,” the soldier ordered, grabbing Yasser aside.
“I
don’t hate the American people but these actions…”
“If
you talk again, I’ll put you in jail.”
At
checkpoints, American soldiers don’t talk much to Iraqis, they act:
they search people and vehicles, they point their weapons at Iraqi
targets, and sometimes they kill or they burn cars.
Now
that checkpoints are spread all over Baghdad, ordinary Iraqis have to
encounter them on an almost daily basis. “‘Allah ma`ak [May Allah
be with you]’ we tell each other before going outdoors,” says
Aghadeer Mohammed, an Iraqi journalist.
“Approaching
a checkpoint, you find weapons pointed at Iraqis.…Even my
two-year-old son, they point their weapons at him and they search him.
How would a kid feel when he finds a machine gun in his face? This is
scary, especially for women and children.”
“Even
my two-year-old son, they point their weapons at him and they
search him.”
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Not
only scary, but also humiliating. “Humiliating, because this is my
neighborhood, this is my land. That he [the occupier] closes it [with
a checkpoint] and takes it is unbearable,” Aghadeer proclaims.
Dignified and proud, Iraqis don’t accept foreign soldiers searching
their bodies and giving or denying them permission to move from one
place to another inside their own country. But at checkpoints, they
don’t have a choice.
“American
soldiers behave in a very wild manner, they get to employ their
weapons quickly, and we all prepare ourselves to avoid their anger,”
says Kazim Ghagrash, Aghadeer’s husband, who is also a journalist.
Human Rights Watch concurs with Kazim in its 2004
World Report: “At checkpoints…edgy U.S. soldiers have
resorted to lethal force with distressing speed…[which] put[s]
civilians at risk.”
So,
obliged to obey the occupiers’ orders, Iraqis can only “look at US
soldiers at checkpoints, with dissatisfaction in their eyes,” while
inside, their blood boils.
Permanent
and mobile checkpoints barricade the city’s roads and seal off some of
its neighborhoods, causing serious traffic jams. The purpose of many
of the “checkpoints” is not to search passers, but to block the
flow of Iraqi cars until occupation forces’ vehicles pass through.
Hundreds of cars are usually kept waiting in line for hours before
they would be allowed to get to work or school. “They don’t care
about the fact that checkpoints are blocking the roads and I am going
to work; they just don’t care,” says Kazim. Sometimes they let him
through with his car; when they don’t, he walks to work.
Another
Iraqi, Salam Onibi, is a computer engineer who also works as a driver
for some NGOs. Every day Salam drives his car in Baghdad’s streets;
every day he has to draw a map in his head for roads he can take
without running into checkpoints.
He
can’t escape them altogether, though. On the highway linking Al-Mahmoudiya
and Al-Haswa, Salam was waiting in his car among hundreds of cars that
had been waiting for over four hours. As he could speak English, he
dared to ask an American soldier about the reason for the delay.
“Sometimes the reasons they give me make me wish I didn’t speak
English,” Salam says, “because they are reasons that offend you
and indicate the stupidity of who put them. Because they are like the
excuses made to children.”
“We
are trying to block the road so that cars would later move
smoothly,” came the soldier’s response to Salam’s question.
Salam didn’t understand what the soldier meant, so he repeated the
question. Another weird reply: “When you leave the cars, they gather
on the road, then when you block the road, they will move together.”
Salam and the two journalists with him in the car kept laughing at the
soldier’s answer all the way to Najaf.
Perhaps
the answer Salam got was just ridiculous. Other American soldiers
would respond in a more aggressive manner. Eyad Mansour*, an Iraqi
dentist, came across a checkpoint with his cousin, who told one of the
US soldiers in charge, “You cause traffic jams,” which was true.
The soldier began cursing all Iraqis, and he brought his colleague,
who said, “We should have nuked the f—— out of this f——
land.”
Many
Iraqis lose their lives due to the invisibility of checkpoints
in the dark.
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“Then
they pulled us out of the car and thoroughly searched us and our car,
simply because we told them about their causing of traffic jams. They
delayed us a lot and caused us problems,” Eyad says. “It seems
that some of the soldiers truly hate Iraq and the Iraqi people.” And
it seems that “American soldiers find no problem at all in delaying
Iraqis for hours, even in the hot, sunny whether,” according to
Ahmed, a political science student in Baghdad University.
At
least Eyad and his cousin got an answer, even if it was an obscene
one.
The
case of Jaber Ali*, an Iraqi translator, is different: “When you ask
them… they don’t answer. They just give you provocative looks or
they wave their hands in a way that indicates disrespect for the Iraqi
citizen, in a humiliating way” coercing Iraqi citizens to stand
still in the face of humiliation. “They kill whoever doesn’t obey
their orders. Really. They kill him and burn his car.”
They
killed Jaber’s in-law, Kairm Hatem Talboukh, a 40-year-old Iraqi
driver. In late November, 2003, Karim was driving his Kia on his way
to Al-Taji Gas Factory, north of Baghdad, in order to pick up Iraqi
workers from the factory and drop them at their homes. He didn’t see
the checkpoint in Al-Taji area. “One couldn’t even see one’s own
hand; it was 10 p.m. and very dark because the area is an open,
agricultural one,” Jaber says. Karim failed to stop at the
checkpoint that he didn’t see, so he was shot dead and his car was
burned.
An
isolated incident? No. Sad stories abound. Human Rights Watch
reported, for example, the story of `Adil `Abd Al-Karim Al-Kawwaz and
his family. `Adil wasn’t aware of the existence of a mobile
checkpoint and failed to stop at it, so US soldiers opened fire,
killing him and three of his children, the youngest of whom was eight
years old.
Many
Iraqis lose their lives due to the invisibility of checkpoints in the
dark.
Others
die when soldiers use “hand signals or verbal orders that Iraqis did
not understand, sometimes with fatal results,” Human Rights Watch
said in a 2004 report.
The
danger posed to Iraqis by US soldiers’ conduct at checkpoints and
roadblocks was eloquently portrayed by an American teacher and writer
who visited Iraq in April 2004. Nearing Baghdad, Aisha Robertson came
across a roadblock, which neither she nor her driver knew whether they
could pass or not. An American soldier waved his hand to them “but
it was not clear as to his meaning—even I as an American could not
understand what he meant by his wave. We didn’t understand whether
we could pass or not. I immediately thought of the numerous Iraqis who
have been killed in their cars while approaching roadblocks such as
this one.”
Sadness
can be seen in Iraq’s streets. “Our hearts bleed when we see those
checkpoints all around our roads, our roads that used to be clean and
beautiful,” Aghadeer says. Baghdad’s streets are now full of
barbed wire and three-meter- high (10-foot) concrete barriers, which
remind Kazim of Palestine.
“Our
hearts bleed when we see those checkpoints all around our
roads, our roads that used to be clean and beautiful.”
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US
soldiers set up mobile checkpoints, then, when they decide to move,
they don’t bother to clean up, carelessly leaving behind the barbed
wire they used, around and over which garbage piles up. Kazim
describes the landscape as upsetting; he laments that his city,
Baghdad, “lost its beauty.” It was once “the best of places,
known by green and cleanness.” Now, it is like “a military camp”
to Aghadeer and Kazim.
Remains
of checkpoints are souvenirs, a reminder of the occupation of their
country. Through checkpoints “the troops keep reminding you that we
are under siege,” Dr. Ali, an Iraqi psychiatrist, remarks. Kazim
says that “the goal is to say ‘we are here,’” prevailing, in a
country that is not theirs, imposing their will on its very nationals.
Some
Iraqis left their life-long homes, fleeing the tough procedures that
they have to undergo in order to enter or exit their neighborhoods.
Many families who used to live in the so-dubbed Green Zone moved from
their neighborhood, which is now confined by “coils of razor wire,
chain-link fences, earthen berms and armed checkpoints,” according
to GlobalSecurity.org. They couldn’t bear living in an area that now
“appears under siege.” Without having a permit issued by US
forces, you can’t enter the Green Zone. “Sometimes they deny you
entry even after you have a permit issued,” Aghadeer points out.
As
a journalist, Aghadeer used to go to the Green Zone frequently, from
1984, during Saddam’s reign, but not anymore. Occupation authorities
don’t let her in. “Under Saddam’s rule, the area was completely
open; it had residential places, a clinic, schools... [now] I can see
fear on the faces of pupils and teachers going to and coming from the
Green Zone.”
Baghdad’s
Green Zone is a four-square-mile area where occupation forces
authorities are based, the very area that encloses Saddam’s
luxurious palaces that saw his years of glory. Those palaces were
always mentioned by American leaders and spokespersons whenever the
US-sponsored, UN-imposed sanctions—which claimed the lives of
thousands of Iraqis—were criticized. In a typical pro-sanctions
statement: The sanctions are effective and it is Saddam Hussein who
embezzles the oil-for-food money and spends it on his own lavish
palaces rather than on the Iraqi people—or so they argued.
Ironically, the Americans have now taken over Saddam’s infamous
palaces, where they currently live and work. Saddam’s presidential
palace compound has become the headquarters of the Coalition
Provisional Authority, and after power is handed over to Iraqis on
June 30, the bulk of the US staff who will be working for the largest
US embassy in the world (in Iraq) will be based in Saddam’s former
Republican Palace, according to the Washington Post (January 2,
2004).
It
remains to be seen what will be the role of Americans in Iraq’s
streets after the “power handover,” given that 138,000 troops will
stay in the country after June 30. Regardless, the dignified Iraqi
people are not likely to forgive or forget US atrocities at
checkpoints: the humiliation, the fear, and the death of loved ones at
the hands of edgy soldiers whose mistakes cost innocent lives.
*Indicated
names have been changed to protect against possible reprisals by
coalition forces
**
Based on telephone interviews with Iraqis
Sara
Khorshid is staff writer for IslamOnline. She holds a
bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Cairo University
and is currently studying for an MA in Journalism. You can reach
her at sarakhorshid@islamonline.net.
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