Death In A Garbage Dump
Maysan: Five People Die Amongst Them A Teenager and Two Children Die Scavenging For Copper
Five people were killed today by exploding ordinance from previous wars in two separate incidents.
In the first incident in West Amarah three brothers Hussein Sabri Matanch (Aged 18) and Rafael Qasim (Aged 12) and Jasim (Aged 9) were trying to dismantle a mortar shell to get at the copper inside it so that they could sell it to scrap dealers. Here’s how eyewitnesses to their deaths describe what happened:
“they were trying to dismantle a mortar shell to get at the copper to sell it to scrap dealers when it exploded in their hands and they died on the spot”
In the second incident this one 45 Km west of Amarah two people were killed extracting the contents of a mortar shell again to sell the copper inside to scrap dealers. It exploded. They died. Source: Aswat al Iraq [Arabic]
Commentary:
I started to translate the news from Arabic late this afternoon – I do have other things to do, and this was the first report to hit my screen. Increasingly frequently I want to scream as I do this and I’m not publishing anything else tonight I’m simply too revolted.
The report on Aswat al Iraq concludes by pointing out that there are many such incidents in Maysan every year. This is because it borders Iran and there’s lots and lots of unexploded ordinance littering the landscape just waiting for poverty stricken desperate people to try their luck at earning a few cents from scrap dealers.
I get reports like this every week from Iraq, sometimes I get several reports a day. Most often they come from the border provinces. Erdla and myself have written here and published photographs like the one you see now time and time and again. We’ve written about the desperate plight of the people of Iraq. We’ve written repeatedly about children living in garbage dumps scavenging for food. Every time I go to Iraq I see children risk their lives by doing what as a former felix I can tell you is one of the most difficult and dangerous things you can do – defuse, by hand, corroded ordinance. That’s why you mostly don’t try to do it by hand. You get a sharpshooter, like Declan or Anto or Smurph to shoot the damned thing from a very safe distance and explode it that way. Only if that can’t be done do you go in and try to defuse it by hand.
Every time I’ve been to Iraq since the Americans invaded I’ve seen something I never saw before - children scavenging in garbage dumps for food. There is now a thriving trade of children being kidnapped, sold, and exported to paedophile brothels. My last few trips I’ve seen something that I’ve never ever ever seen before in Iraq. Children with the tell-tale red rash around their mouths. That’s not even the worst of it.
Once they arrive in her camp Maryam routinely now has to lock up some of the kids that Ali manages to talk off the streets and into one of her refugee convoys. She locks them in the Mosque basement while they undergo withdrawal symptoms. Several of them have died in convulsions because they’re simply too weakened to survive cold turkey.
I find it impossible to describe how I feel getting mails from Maryam telling me about that. I find it impossible to describe what goes through my mind and through my heart when I see a child pick up a piece of rotted food in a garbage dump and eat it. I simply have no words for how I feel when I see that.
On my son Dubhaltach’s last trip to Iraq he was approached no less than 5 times by young parents asking him to take their children. Not even selling the poor kids. They’d been driven beyond and below even that level of desperation. No, all they wanted for him to just ”please take them so that they can eat.” I find it impossible to describe how Erdla and myself felt as Dubhaltach broke down helplessly describing how he wished he could have done what they wanted. As he tried to tell us how he felt when he was approached by a recently widowed young woman offfering him her eight year old daughter and seven year old son:
“They are good children. Very beautiful.
Pause:
“They are good children. Very obedient.
Pause:
“Take them, feed them, they are very obedient. They will do anything you want
Significant Pause and then in a whisper:
“Anything…”
Today the photograph that you saw above came in over the wires. Here it is again.
When Dubhaltach tried politely and gently to describe what it was he had seen, and heard, and smelt in Iraq, on a leading so-called “liberal” American site he was told by its denizens that he was being “shrill” and ”rude” and that they didn’t like his “tone.”
This was was said to him by people who knew that he risks his life daily as a bomb disposal officer in Afghanistan. But God forbid that anyone who isn’t one of the master race puncture their self-satisfied delusion that their country is still a force for good when it manifestly has become a force for evil.
Even under Saddam and sanctions there was enough to eat. To succeed in a three year period in behaving worse than that bloodsoaked monster, to succed in a three year period in reducing vast swathes of the population to dependency on miserably inadequate food handouts, to succeed in reducing enormous numbers to the level of hunger where their children die trying to get food to eat and where parents try to sell their children is a uniquely shameful and barbaric accomplishment.
As I repeatedly point out if you want to see the real values of a society you only have to look at how their soldiers and their police behave. Behold the new American flag. It represents the true values of the government and complacent self-satisfied citizenry of America. The true values of the country that coined the phrase: “People get the government they deserve,” the values of a people who once had a basically decent government in a basically decent republic. Not any more. America is an empire now and it can make its own reality. This flag replaces the old one and is to be displayed “with pride” in windows throughout the land.
Dear Average Ordinary John and Jane Doe American Citizens,
I hope you like your new flag. I hope you enjoy your unearned sense of entitlement as you squander your inheritance of freedom and wealth. The inheritance earned for you by preceding generations who really did love their country, who really did have something to be proud of, who really did value freedom, and who really did want to see it spread. They made many mistakes but at root their intentions were benevolent and they were prepared to sacrifice and die to bring their benevolent intentions to fruition.
I hope you like your new flag. You wiped your arse with the old one right after you guzzled the meal from the takeaway.
Hussein Sabri Matanch (Aged 18) and his brothers Rafael Qasim (Aged 12) and Jasim (Aged 9) lived lives of misery and starvation so that you could enjoy your sense of superiority. Their deaths today are on your country’s hands.
I hope you’re fucking proud of yourselves. Have a nice day.
Yours Sincerely,
markfromireland
There are still some fools in our western ‘civilised’ countries who say that the world is better off without Saddam. But nobody asks the question whether Iraq is better off without Saddam.
“who really did have something to be proud of, who really did value freedom, and who really did want to see it spread. They made many mistakes but at root their intentions were benevolent and they were prepared to sacrifice and die to bring their benevolent intentions to fruition.”
what kind of fantasy is this? they stole the land from the natives, using genocide as a handy tool, and then imported humans from Africa as slaves to make their wealth.
which is, of course, not that different from what others have done over the ages.
The ending of your post is a sure fire way to get any decent americans (who may be in agreement with you) to stay away.
We need panic, we need alarm, we need resistance full throttle against the machine.
Iraqis are on the front line against the struggle by elitists to consolidate resources and enslave us.
All of us are next. If the Iraqi’s aren’t supported by us all right now, we will surely suffer at the hands of a greater power.
We need to stop these corporatists war profiteers. They will divide us all against each other and force us to defeat each other to their advantage. The makings of civil war are already in place in almost all countries of the world, with open borders everywhere and no possible way to feed people as oil depletes.
Look up the petroleum-to-food link. We are on the edge of global meltdown.
They say “don’t panic”. But I think we need to initiate a lot of panic around the world. We need to motivate the underclasses (that is you unless you are a multi-billionairre illuminati type).
6 billion of us rely upon petroleum for all we have, eat and do. It is the energy, stupid.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html
Susan My home these days is in Denmark a country occupied by the Germans during World War II. There are painful memories here of how they behaved. (And in Denmark they behaved relatively “well”)
Erdla, my daughter in law who writes here occasionally has good reason to be grateful to that generation of Americans as she wrote back in April last year:
she also said:
The resistance activities in question consisted of helping Jews escape. You try coming over here, try talking to people who lived under the occupation … do that in …. any country you like so long as it was occupied by the Germans … then try going to one of the concentration camps. Then talk to some more of that generation – there’s good reason to be glad America fought the Germans and stood firm against Russia under Stalin.
Neuengamme was were the old gentleman who was Erdla’s grandfather was imprisoned. The photos of him when he got out are … distressing. He was grateful to his liberators til the day he died. Courtesy of him I learnt from Erdla’s father about how as a child he and his family had to go on the run for fear of what the Germans and their collaborators would do to them.
From growing up in Ireland and having friends in “little Jerusalem” I already knew (long story which I’ll tell you some day) people with the infamous tattoos on their arms. Even all that time later they were still plagued with health problems from their time in the camps.
I realise there’s a lot to be ashamed of in America’s history that’s true of every country of Ireland, Denmark, France ….. of every country and I realise too that there was self-interest in America’s entry into the war. Nevertheless it acted as a great force for good and then – again in enlightened self-interest, helped one devatastated country after another get back on their feet and incidentally deterred another tyranny from overrunning the entire continent. I can write what I write and do as I do because of their commitment and their sacrifice. I never forget that and I too am very grateful to them.
The other thing is as has been said here repeatedly “Guides” is most emphatically not written with a western audience in mind – let alone an American one. The team behind it is for the most neither Christian nor “white.”
Nor is it (for the most part) read by people who are either Christian or “white” – we track our stats and reactions very carefully and we reach our target audience. Finally:
Neither I nor the team here are particularly interested in whether they come, go, or stay away, they’re not who we’re interested in reaching they never were. Our priorities and our audience are completely different. And quite frankly most of us gave up on the American public a long time ago. From our standpoint what it will take to get America to start behaving in a civilised way is the defeat of America in Iraq. Their military defeat. Their defeat at the hands of the people they launched this evil war against. There are as I’ve said to you elsewhere many good and decent Americans horrified at what is being done in their names. You’re one of them. The work you and they do is important now and will be vital when time comes to help America heal itself. But that’s for you and other Americans to achieve not us.
If some of what is written here helps strenghten the anti-war movement in the States that’s wonderful and we’re thrilled. But it’s an ancillary benefit not a primary one.
markfromireland,
Thank you for the article, it’s nice to have the other side even if it does mean having to search it out on the net rather than have it presented with the frequency and weight it deserves in the conventional media.
While I’m not naive about the more unpalatable aspects of human nature, I was a little puzzled about the following reference, Commentary section, 4th paragrah:
“My last few trips I’ve seen something that I’ve never ever ever seen before in Iraq. Children with the tell-tale red rash around their mouths. That’s not even the worst of it.”
Could you please explain without leaving any doubt what you mean by the ‘tell-tale red rash’? (Please put the question down to my rather sheltered upbringing. A few horrid thoughts did cross my mind but I’d rather know for sure what you meant.)
Thanks
It’s the dead give away sign that they’re glue sniffing r. The context to this is that it’s now very easy and very cheap to get narcotics and or a mix of prescription medicines on the street. Narcotics are flooding into Iraq a country in which they were previously almost completely unknown – that’s thanks to the monumental fuckup in Afghanistan. If those kids can’t afford the astoundingly cheap drugs they turn to glue. I can’t blame them their lives are hell.
I wrote about this during a previous trip:
If you can’t afford 50 US cents street sellers sell valium “loose.” A “mouthful” of codeine mixed with “medical alcohol” for the equivalent of US¢10. This last is very popular with street children. Glue sniffing – solvent abuse, is also noticably prevalent among street children in the poorer quarters.
The comments to that posting are worth reading as well. There’s very good info on glue sniffing posted by smurph who is one of the moderators here.
I might be mistaken but doesn’t sniffing glue block out hunger pangs? Jesus Christ we’re the richest country in the world and we force children to prostitute themselves and hunt in garbage piles for food. God will not forgive us!
Yes Grania that’s one of the things it does.
I just want to come back to something here so that people understand “where we come from”
Nobody here neither the Iraqi nor the western contingent is a secularist. Most of us are from a military background in fact only 3 people on the team have never borne arms.
We welcome comments from people who are secularists we welcome comments from people who are pacifists but we disagree profoundly with the beliefs and their analyses and would neither have them as part of the team or publish guest postings by them.
That decision was made right at the outset by the Iraqi contingent and as they are the majority here it is they who determine both the policy and tone of “Gorillas Guides.” During that meeting it was put to a vote and passed unanimously. For the record it’s the only vote that was ever passed unanimously :-).
we’re very diverse what we have in common is our humanity and the fact that our political beliefs spring from and reflect our very diverse religious beliefs.
Some Examples:
Correction to above: I stand corrected. Erdla is the only person on the team who has never “fired in anger”
Mark et al-
There is a rally in my town on Thursday to publicly oppose Bush’s planned “surge.” Every Friday at noon, a large contigent of protesters against the war gathers outside the Federal building.
Our entire congressional delegation voted against the AUMF, and has continued to fight both the war, the lies this administration used to justify the war, and the gutting of constitutional and human rights the Bush administration propogates.
I just want your non-western readers and Ali, Laith, Mohammed, Maryam, Zeynab and others who are living through this Hell, to know there are places in the U.S. where the population, and its elected officials, are fighting to end the occupation.
In the meantime, I have forwarded your post to my congressional delegation.
They know Dairymaid. We’re trying to get the secure portal setup so that they can post to here safely. Being an eedjit I got the lastest version of the software and the latest and greatest hardware and we’re having a sod of a job configuring it.
There are no words, only frank sorrow for what I have read here tonight. As the article in the Guardian this week laid out, desperately poor people are also selling their daughters in Afghanistan. Never mind that it is against Afghan and Islamic law; we have starved and hurt the proud and dignified peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan and neglected so many others that they are forced to SURVIVE as best they can and numb their grievous pain as best they can so that they may find some cold and lonely and brief respite from hell on earth with an alternate reality.
I am sorry. It is not enough, I know. I heard the president again deny reality, his wrongs and yet announce that he is happy to sacrifice more blood and lives tonight with not a care in the world. Blame from both of America’s political parties falsely falls on the Iraqis and I promise I will not rest til this egregious wrong is rectified!
What hubris they exhibit and what shame I bear.
[...] http://gorillasguides.com/2007/01/09/death-in-a-garbage-dump/ [...]
[...] While reading at Corrente Wire, I came across this story from http://www.gorillasguides.com. It is very distressing. Death in a Garbage Dump. [...]
First of all, anyone who believes that freedom can be spread is a fool. It can’t. Period. It has to be fought for from the ground up.
Second, in the next world, the “greatest generation” will be happy to receive your gratitude. Don’t bother mentioning anything in the here and now.
Third, the U.S. has been engaged in a foreign policy dictated by and serving the interests of elites since the Gilded Age. Power & interest have trumped principle completely ever since. Even the interventions in ww1 & ww2 were elite-driven.
The United States must revert to the Articles and disavow the Constitution. If it cannot uphold the Constitution honestly, it should not uphold it at all.
[...] I saw this story this morning, how Lieutenant Watada, who has refused to deploy to the illegal war in Iraq, clearly thought his refusal and public statements would give a V for Vendetta like wake up call to the American people. Unfortunately, such pleas seem to be having the opposite effect on Americans who shop more voraciously the more heinous the crimes done in their name become. [...]
I’m a proud American and I thank you for your insults, we need that.
In a free country both good and evil may prosper. There have been times that the good has ruled over the evil and there are times evil rules over the good and the good is silent, and that is now.
But please know that some of us aren’t silent and wish that this would end today.
Thanks,
Roger The Okcitykid
I, like many others around the world, demonstrated against the war. I’d just want to say that most of the world is not blind to the atrocities happening. There is a reason why a majority of people around our globe name the US as the largest threat to world peace. Unfortunately we are not “the decicionmakers”.
bethris said that if we can’t operate under the Constitutuion we should revert to the Articles and disavow it. Anyone know what this means? harrisbriefs.
ala Wikipedia:
The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, commonly known as the Articles of Confederation, was the first governing document of the United States of America. ….
The Articles united the new thirteen American states into a loose confederation,…
following the conclusion of the War and the onset of new priorities, its many conspicuous inadequacies became glaringly obvious. It was replaced by the much stronger United States Constitution upon its ratification on June 21, 1788.
This comment has been moderated. You should have checked what the policy here is before you started whinging.
It’s also been sent to one of the Iraqis living in Iraq for reply.
You won’t like being told what they think of you and hypocritical cowardly whining but the choice was yours.
PS: learn to type.
Erdla
Thanks, moebius. Was the comment by b all snark, or is there something in a less powerful central government? New York would certainly be a powerful anti-war state and could force the issue by
withholding taxes for any escalation.
The majority of the United States citizens are against the war in Iraq. The problem we face is for the first time in our history we have a leader that is a dictator with enormous amounts of money behind him. The media has always saved us from bad leaders in the past. We now find ourselves with medias that have been bought out by those that support Bush and his administration. We are in very scary times here. We protest, write letters, try to get the truth out and it is helping but we are fighting money and power like we have never seen before. We are indeed scared for our freedom.
My grandparents came here from Ireland. I am a descendent of Rob Roy Mac Gregor. Fighting against money and power is not new. My friends and I will continue in our protest. That is all we can do.
It breaks my heart that so many have died and are suffering in these wars.
Help us get the word out.
Thank you,
CJ (retired social worker)
[...] wiring from mines and sell it to scap mechants see this posting by markfromireland called “Death in a Garbage Dump“ - [...]
I remain horrified. I have been horrified for so many days now I feel I am losing my mind. And this is all from the comfort of the United States. Thank you for conveying this horrible truth to us. My apologies or sorrow means nothing in the face of what is being done. How I wish it did, for I would offer them both to you with both my hands.
a small point. you write that “…The inheritance earned for you by preceding generations who really did love their country, who really did have something to be proud of, who really did value freedom, and who really did want to see it spread. They made many mistakes but at root their intentions were benevolent and they were prepared to sacrifice and die to bring their benevolent intentions to fruition.”
This is not accurate. What America is doing to now Irak is not a new thing. America has invented reasons for wars of aggression, wars of fuel and land acquisitions for a long time. The original American settlers mass-murdered and stole land from the indigenous of her own continent with many similar grand notions and flowery words as Freedom and Liberty; they used “Manifest Destiny,” the concept that a Divine Fate gave them the right to kill and steal land. The war on Mexico, under President Polk, was begun based on lies; this “benevolent” war gave America half her land, notably the gold-rich state of California. The war on Vietnam and the aggressive sanctions on Cuba were to prevent these countries from becoming independent of American direction and dependence.
As far as benevolence, we could easily call America’s second world war a just cause, but even then, she held out from fighting for a long time, as wars raged and pogroms were launched, and freedoms destroyed, and death camps built. Concerned with liberty? Great Britain and France, India, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand all entered that fight before the United States. War had been raging around the globe for years and America did nothing for the world’s “freedom” or in helping it “spread.”
And to excuse the rest of her typical actions—blackbag jobs and secret CIA interventions around the world, installing puppet governments and the like as “at root, good intentions”? One could also say that the American government has “good intentions” in Irak, correct? It is by the book, nothing new.
Nor will it be the last war of this sort. Because most Americans see their past wars as you list here: grand, glorious, justified notions. Just as some (not many left, perhaps) see the invasion and occupation of Irak the same way. And as long as the true motives for these wars are glossed over in this way, why would they ever do anything different?
[...] and the deliberate and systematic collapsing of all the social instutions after the invasion. That is why parents even try to sell their children offering them as playthings to complete stranger… he was approached no less than 5 times by young parents asking him to take their children. Not even [...]
[...] such deaths and maimings of children who scavenge in Dhi Qar over the past two years. See “Death In A Garbage Dump” for an explanation of what the children were doing in a dump with old munitions – [...]
I am ashamed of what my country has done. I have opposed that ignorance all along. I can only see more hurt and brokenness coming, as well. And utterly unhelpful to me is this article. The people who are causing all this trouble will not be reached by it– just people like me looking for articles on dump scavenging and trying to figure out how to dismantle these problems.
Tell me how to help– don’t ask me if I’m proud of my country because you know I am not. Tell me about solutions or please learn diplomacy. How are you going to reach a single person who does not already agree with you? You won’t.
I am sorry that the article was unhelpful to you but no doubt the search engine you used gave many other results hopefully some of those will inspire you :-)
As to diplomacy – no the article is not diplomatic. As to your advice quite frankly I find it arrogant.
Try living as we do in a country with more than 5 million orphans and more than one million widows.
I am one of those widows and as well as my own children I care for my sisters’ children and my brother’s children as they are now orphans.
Don’t come talking to me, or to any Iraki, about how we need to learn diplomacy. There is nothing even remotely diplomatic about the barbarism that the government and people of your country have deliberately, cynically, and carelessly inflicted on me, my children, my two sisters, and my brother and their children, so that your government and your people could satisfy their greed.
Um Thalit-
I am in awe of your restraint.
With respect-
D.