Tag: Basra

I promised that I would return (Liberate THIS, Part 11)

Posted on by kathiemm

A continuing series by Dr. Dahlia Wasfi

My father was one of ten children, so we have a lot of family in Iraq.  Seemingly everywhere I was escorted during those six days in Basra, I met blood relatives or my father’s former students.

Marines fire on Fallujah
U.S. Marines fire on Fallujah. Image in public domain.

Most Basrawis (pronounced “bas-RAO-weez,” meaning people of Basra) live their whole lives in their hometown. My father, though, had traveled to the U.S. and become successful.

I heard so many wonderful accolades about him and his teaching during my short stay. I later joked with my father that all the images of Saddam Hussein that had been destroyed after the invasion soon would be replaced with his picture to honor his courage and success.

I experienced joy with my cousins that I had not felt for long as I could remember. My spirits were up, so much so that I stopped my anti-depressive medications. I felt cured.

Because of the unpredictability of a country without law and order, my stay was cut short.  I had to return to Amman via Baghdad to make my flight home. But I promised my family that I would return for a longer stay—very soon, we hoped—when conditions in the new Iraq had improved.  I left in early March 2004.

While we looked toward the horizon for better days, conditions in Iraq went from bad to worse. Electricity and water became scarcer, as did jobs and security. But the lack of these basic necessities was quickly overshadowed by the monstrous obscenities of the American-led occupation.

The atrocities committed against Iraqis by occupation forces at Abu Ghraib prison (and many other prisons throughout the country) came to light. With good reason, anti-American sentiment in Iraq skyrocketed to new highs. The indiscriminate slaughter of Iraqis continued, exemplified by the April 2004 siege of the city of Fallujah, the October 2004 bombings of Fallujah, and the November 2004 massacre of the people of Fallujah.

That November, I had wanted to take my return trip to Iraq, but U.S. Marines had blocked the route of my last trip, the road from Amman to Baghdad.

 

Street sewage in new “democratic” Iraq (Liberate THIS, Part 9)

Posted on by kathiemm

A continuing series by guest author Dr. Dahlia Wasfi

In February and March 2004, I made a 19-day journey to Iraq. The first memories of my life were from my early years in Iraq. My life would start over again there, too.

Sign: What have you done today for the Iraqi people?
Photo by Peter Rimar, in public domain

With Baghdad International Airport controlled by American occupation forces (as was true for years to come), I flew to Jordan and made the 10-hour car ride to Baghdad.

In Iraq’s capital, a year after the invasion, damage from bombing raids was omnipresent. Iraq had been liberated, alright—from sovereignty, security, electricity, and potable water. The new “democratic” Iraq modeled sewage in the streets, rolling blackouts, shootings, and explosions.

After several days spent visiting my Baghdadi relatives, I needed to reach my father’s immediate family in the south. Ahmed[i], one of my cousins from Basra, drove 12 hours round trip with a friend to pick me up and bring me to visit the rest of the family. With numerous checkpoints and no security, their efforts were Herculean.

To my naïve foreign eyes, Basra’s condition appeared to be much the same as Baghdad’s, except that the damage seemed more extensive. This city had been destroyed during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, the 1991 Gulf War, and the 2003 Shock and Awe invasion.  Throughout that time, sanctions and neglect had thwarted the city’s—and her people’s—recovery.

I expected to encounter resentment during my visit.  After all, my immediate family had left Iraq for America during the good days of the 1970s.  So much destruction had been wrought against the Iraqi people by my government since then.

Every destroyed building we passed, every sewage-flooded street, every child suffering in poverty, I despairingly thought to myself, “You’re welcome, Iraq. I helped do this to you.”  I held resentment towards myself and deep shame as an American in this occupied land.

[i] Name changed.

My government rained down terror (Liberate THIS, Part 2)

Posted on by kathiemm

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison: Engaging Peace is pleased to publish the second in the ongoing series from Dahlia Wasfi‘s book, Liberate THIS]

My father was born and raised in Basra, Iraq. Graduating from Baghdad University, he earned a government scholarship to study in the United States.  He completed his graduate studies at Georgetown University.

Weapons cache in Basra
Weapons cache in Basra (Image in public domain)

While in DC, he met and married my mom, a nice Jewish girl from New York. Her parents had fled their homeland of Austria during Hitler’s Anschluss and emigrated to the United States. Was it love at first sight? I don’t know, but my sister was born in 1969, and I arrived in 1971.

To pay back his scholarship from Iraq, my father taught at Basra University from 1972 to 1977.  Thus, my early childhood was spent in both Iraq and the United States. For me, the bombing of Basra was equivalent to the bombing of Yonkers, New York. I had family in both places.

Upon returning to the Swarthmore College campus for the spring semester, I was dumbstruck by what I remember to be a mostly pro-war atmosphere.  The militancy was in stark contrast to the peaceful traditions of its Quaker founders who established the school in 1864.

The Quakers, a Christian denomination also known as the Religious Society of Friends, are known as a peace church, because of their teachings’ emphasis on pacifism.  While Swarthmore no longer has any religious affiliation, it prides itself on being an institution that still reflects many Quaker values.  As the current brochures describe, “Foremost among [these values] is a commitment to the common good and to the preparation of future leaders who will influence favorably a changing and complex world.”

In the early months of 1991, as far as I could tell, Swarthmore was a breeding ground for warmongers. Flags and pro-military banners hung from the dorms of Parrish Hall, the main building on campus. Their messages remain burned in my memory.  On a white sheet, students had written, “By Air, By Sea, By Land:  Bye-Bye, Iraq.”  Hanging from the next window:  “U.S. Troops:  Simply the Best.”  They made me cringe.  The blatant disrespect for the lives of Iraqi victims was sickening to me.

I thought, what the hell is going on? Why didn’t the best and brightest understand that war is unacceptable, no matter who is directing the tanks? Why was the anti-war sentiment drowned out at this “liberal” institution?

Internally, I condemned the hypocrisy of militancy on a campus that purported to reflect peaceful traditions.  But the Swarthmore disconnect between image and reality was mirroring the hypocrisy that I despised within myself.  I was living the American dream at one of the top—one of the most expensive—schools in the nation.  Meanwhile my government rained down terror in the form of cruise missiles on Iraqi families.

Dahlia Wasfi