The Legacy, Part One

Khitam Hamad, 12, whose face and body was burned after a car bomb exploded in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, poses in a hallway at a program operated by Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) on November 28, 2011 in Amman, Jordan. MSF has been running a reconstructive-surgery program for war-wounded Iraqis since August 2006. The program, which helps Iraqis irrespective of age or ethnic/religious background, is currently treating roughly 120 cases. MSF was forced to pull out of Iraq in 2004 due to the escalating violence in the country. Following the years of violence in the country, the state of medical care in Iraq is poor. There is a chronic shortage of doctors and nurses and much of the country's hospitals are using outdated and damaged equipment.

(Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Date created: 28 Nov 2011

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At Iraq War’s End, Wounds Are Still Fresh for Falluja

They came on Wednesday to bury the war: clerics and sheiks, children and widows from across this scarred city. In the shadow of an overpass, they waved banners, burned an American flag, displayed photos of their dead and shouted well-worn denunciations of departing American forces. 

“It’s a festival,” said Sheik Hamid Ahmed Hasham, the head of the local council, whose four predecessors were assassinated. 

Once an inner ring of Iraq’s wartime inferno, Falluja is only too eager to say goodbye to nearly nine shattering years of raids, bombings and house-to-house urban combat. At least 200 American troops were killed in this city. Untold thousands of Iraqis died, civilians and insurgents who are mourned equally as martyrs. 

Today, Falluja is a city desperately seeking normal. 

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Many people of Fallujah are in deep, deep pain from the US war of aggression and occupation.  That pain is obvious in the face of the young girl above.  But this pain goes way beyond the physical pain and physical scars.  Today, the people of Fallujah are afraid to have a child, because the odds of a child having severe birth defects are very high.  The odds of a newborn baby dying in the first week of life are one in four.  The odds of a child getting cancer are very high.  Adults are getting cancer in record numbers also.  And this started in 2005, so we can be sure that something that the US military did in 2004 is the root cause of all these birth defects and cancers.

I can think of nothing more evil than to take away a person’s ability to have a healthy child.

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There are a lot of reports coming out about Iraq, since the occupation is coming to an end.  I will highlight some of them on this blog.  Pictures are on the blog FACES OF GRIEF.