Tag: Liberate THIS

One million malnourished children (Liberate THIS, Part 4)

Posted on by kathiemm

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison:  Today we continue our series of excerpts from Dr. Dahlia Wasfi’s book.]

Most of my cousins were born after my immediate family left Iraq in 1977.  I had never met them, and I had only faint memories of aunts and uncles, as well as my paternal grandmother who had already passed away in 1979.

Child in Iraq war
Child victim of Iraq war (Image in public domain)

I knew I had many relatives suffering under desperate conditions in Iraq, but I was emotionally, as well as geographically, distant from their pain.  With English as my one and only language, I couldn’t speak with them on the phone even if U.S. and U.K. forces hadn’t bombed the telecommunications centers.

I condemned the hypocrisy of my government for starving the Iraqi people while claiming to punish Saddam Hussein.  But the hypocrisy I despised was within me.  I continued my life, business as usual, graduating in 1993, and moving on to medical school, with a sadness I could not explain.

Between 1991 and 1997, I finished my Bachelor’s degree at Swarthmore and earned my medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania.  During the same time period, economic sanctions achieved the chronic malnourishment of nearly 1,000,000 children in central and southern Iraq.[1]  According to Philippe Heffinck, then UNICEF Representative in Baghdad, “It is clear that children are bearing the brunt of the current economic hardship.”[2]  By the following year, the mortality rate of Iraqi children under five years old was a shocking 500,000 deaths higher than predicted since 1991.[3]

I knew these figures, but I didn’t have time to think about them.  I had begun a surgical residency, first at the University of Maryland, and then back at Penn for a year of research.  I was constantly working, ever more sleep-deprived, and miserable. Yet, I remained unconscious of the internal contradiction fueling my unhappiness.

After three grueling years, I believed that changing fields would bring me contentment.  I switched to a training program in anesthesiology at Georgetown University Hospital, where I began working in June 2000.  My experiences there would prove to be the final straw.

[1] http://www.unicef.org/newsline/97pr60.htm

[2] Ibid.

[3] http://www.unicef.org/newsline/99pr29.htm

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi

Shattering my world (Liberate THIS, Part 3)

Posted on by kathiemm

[Note by Kathie Malley-Morrison:  Today we are pleased to publish the third in our ongoing series from Dr. Dahlia Wasfi‘s book, Liberate THIS.]

The missiles that trailed across the Arabian night sky that January of 1991 fractured the calm over Iraq, like the war itself shattered my world and my memories to pieces.

Marine fighter planes during Iraq war
Marine fighter planes during Iraq war (Image in public domain)

There was no question that the regime of Saddam Hussein was politically repressive. But now, Iraqis suffered under brutality from within and aerial bombardment from without.

Iraqi families were under attack.  My fellow students were celebrating.

Yet, even though I had insight that no one else could have, I said and did nothing for our victims.  At the time, assimilation was a higher priority for me than speaking the truth.  I reeked of selling out.

More than 100,000 Iraqis perished during the 42 days of Gulf War I, but I was lucky.  My blood relatives survived. The worst was yet to come, however, because our aerial assaults had purposely targeted Iraq’s electricity plants, telecommunication centers, and water treatment facilities.  These attacks were in direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the protection of civilians in war[1].

In a matter of days, life became desperate. There was no potable water, no electricity, and with economic sanctions in place, there soon would be no means of rebuilding.

Severe economic sanctions had been imposed on Iraq four days after Iraqi troops entered Kuwait, on August 6, 1990.  (In sad irony, that date was the forty-five year anniversary of another Western targeting of a civilian population, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan.)  All of Iraq’s exports and imports were banned in order to induce Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait.[2]

Though withdrawal was completed by the end of the 1991 Gulf War in April, those brutal sanctions remained in place for years.  Once stored resources were depleted, Iraqis began to starve.  It was a stringent medical, cultural, intellectual, and nutritional embargo that victimized the already-suffering Iraqi people.

I knew the direct correlation between my government’s actions and human suffering.  I did nothing.

Dahlia Wasfi

[1] http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/INTRO/380  Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Geneva, 12 August 1949.

[2] Herring, Eric.  “Between Iraq and a Hard Place:  A Critique of the Case for UN Economic Sanctions” in Falk, Richard, Irene Gendzier, and Robert Jay Lifton, eds.  Crimes of War:  Iraq. Avalon Publishing Group, Inc.  New York, NY.  2006. p .223.

 

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

“They started bombing” (Liberate THIS, Part 1)

Posted on by kathiemm

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison: Today we begin our serialization of excerpts from Dahlia Wasfi’s upcoming book on the invasion and occupation of Iraq from her perspective as the daughter of an American Jewish mother and an Iraqi Muslim father.]

Ordnance load on U.S. Marines plane during Operation "Desert Storm" 1991
Ordnance load on U.S. Marines plane during Operation "Desert Storm" 1991 (Image in public domain)

“Dahlia, come here,” my father called.

The resignation in his voice told me that something was wrong.

On the east coast of the United States, it was 7 p.m., January 16, 1991.  In Iraq—my father’s birthplace—it was 3 a.m. the following day. I was upstairs in my parents’ house in Delaware, during winter break of my sophomore year at Swarthmore College.

When I heard his sad command, I tiptoed to the balcony overlooking the family room.  I thought that if I stepped delicately enough, nothing would be disturbed when I reached my father.  My efforts were futile.  Peering over the railing, I saw him standing by the television.

“They started bombing,” he said.  The assault of Gulf War I had begun.

I looked down to my father over the banister with helpless despair.  He looked into the television screen with helpless despair.  I wanted to reach down into the TV and stop what was happening, maybe even stop time until I could figure out a solution.  But I could only stand motionless, frozen at the balcony, trying to process what was happening.

Even as I tell this story years later, my stomach churns as it did that day, for the hopelessness and helplessness of that moment.  Fear and sadness instantly overcame me.

My relatives were among the millions of Iraqis who had no say in their government’s actions, but who would pay dearly at the hands of the most powerful military in the world.  I couldn’t help my dad.  I couldn’t help my family.

Moments later, once the initial shock of the news passed, I found myself nervously humming. I soon realized the song was R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It.” For me, it was.

Dahlia Wasfi, M.D.