WWB: dead bodies dumped on the street

WWB: dead bodies dumped on the streets

WHAT WAR BRINGS: dead bodies of unknown persons found dumped on the streets, and nearly anywhere else also

A part of all wars and occupations is the vast rise in murder and violence in the society that has war visited upon them, or has a foreign occupation visited upon them.

Part of that are just random murders, because society just disintegrates and people go generally nutso and kill off whomever. Or it could be old family feuds or neighborhood feuds that drive the increase in murders. Or it could be racial violence.

But another part of it – a large part in the case of Iraq – is sectarian violence, or politically motivated violence.

Here is a very small sample of the bodies found dumped in Iraq in the last few months. I really did not look too hard for these, and I am certain there are many, many more:

Dead bodies found on the street

29 May 2009 Police on Thursday said they found the body of man in Telkeif, north of Mosul, adding that the man had been dead for at least a few days.

2 corpses found in Makhmour

29 May 2009 Police forces on Friday found two bodies of a man and a woman in a house at Takh village, southwestern Makhmour suburb, according to a security source. The bodies bore signs of gunshot wounds. Makhmour, which lies 68 km southwest of Arbil city, is one of the disputed areas between the central Baghdad government and the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

Body found in Kirkuk

5 July 2009 Police found the body of a man with bullet wounds to the head and chest in Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, on Saturday, police said.

Young man found dead in Makhmour

5 July 2009 Iraqi army forces on Sunday found an unknown body belonging to a young man in northern Iraq, according to an army source. Makhmour is administratively affiliated with Ninewa province. It is one of the disputed areas between the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). It is located 68 km southwest of Arbil, which lies 362 km northeast of Baghdad.

Unknown body found in Diala

14 July 2009 Police forces on Tuesday found an unknown body in a village near Baaquba, according to a local security source. “The corpse, found in Sharwin village, Shahraban district (45 km northeast of Baaquba), bore signs of gunshot wounds and was taken to the morgue,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. “The age of the victim ranges from 25 to 30 years. He is believed to have been killed during the past two days,” the source noted. Baaquba, the capital city of Diala province, lies 57 km northeast of Baghdad.

Body of girl found in Kut

17 July 2009 Policemen found the body of a girl in her 20s in eastern al-Kut city on Friday, a security source said. “The body, showing signs of having been shot, was found in the open and most probably she was killed today (July 17),” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. “The body was removed to the Kut al-Zahraa Hospital morgue in case identified by relatives,” he added. Kut, the capital city of Wassit province, lies 180 km southeast of Baghdad.

Body of a man in uniform found

20 July 2009 Meanwhile, the same source said police forces in Diwaniya found on Monday an unidentified body of a man clad in uniform in the area of al-Nahr al-Thalith, (65 km) east of the capital city of al-Diwaniya. “The body showed signs of having been stabbed to death,” he said, adding the police are investigating the incident. Diwaniya lies 180 km south of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

Body found in Mosul

6 Aug 2009 A body with bullet wounds was found in northern Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

Body found in Mosul

23 Aug 2009 Police said they found the body of a man on Saturday whose throat had been slit in eastern Mosul.

This is by no means a comprehensive listing.

As bad as things might be in 2009 in Iraq, it is nothing compared to what happened in 2006. This is a blog post from News About Iraq (which is no longer being updated) from May 4, 2006. The links to the original articles no longer work, but these articles originally came from Reuters.

Iraq's Interior Ministry also updated the number of Iraqis whose bullet-ridden bodies were found in the country on Wednesday to 43, many of them in the capital.

And this:

An average of 35 to 50 bodies, most of them with gunshot wounds, are brought to Baghdad's main morgue every day, likely victims of sectarian killings, its deputy director said on Thursday.

It was in 2006 that the numbers of dead bodies found on the streets really shot up (sometimes over a hundred in a single day) but 2005 and 2007 also showed significant numbers. The blog Today in Iraq and Iraq Today tracked what happened on a daily basis in Iraq.

All the other years of the US occupation of Iraq have shown this same reality….. this definitely shows that US forces were not able to keep the average Iraqi safe at all. (Of course, some of these dead bodies on streets may have come about because of US policy under Rumsfeld and Negroponte. We just don’t know for sure.)

But, an average of 50 bodies a day would be equal to 18,250 per year. Since the US population is roughly ten times the population of Iraq, that would be 182,250 dead bodies on the streets (or wherever) in the USA in one year. That is the reality Iraqis lived through in 2006.

People would come to the local morgues to try to identify the bodies of their missing loved ones, but were often unsuccessful. The bodies were often decayed or damaged by violence, and where therefore unrecognizable.

Many of the unknown Iraqi bodies from Baghdad were buried in a mass grave in Najaf. That mass grave alone (over 40,000 bodies in July 2007) is bigger than all of the Saddam mass graves that have been uncovered. It is very unlikely that Saddam’ s mass graves will end up totally more than that one mass grave in Najaf. AND there are other mass grave sites in Iraq from the US invasion and occupation that have yet to be uncovered.

If unidentified bodies are being dumped in Afghanistan, it is not making the news. I could only find examples of bodies dumped who were identified – often kidnapping victims. It was mainly foreigners who were the victims.

Unknown bodies were found in Pakistan, and they most likely were combatants, not civilians:

Bodies of 18 found in Swat valley

16 Aug 2009 Pakistani troops on Sunday found bodies of at least 18 suspected militants in the scenic Swat valley, where the army is wrapping up a three-month offensive against the Taliban, media reports said.

If you support the continued occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan, or the bombing of Pakistan, then you support WHAT WAR BRINGS: the dumping of dead bodies on the public streets.