Mike Ferner
Voices in The Wilderness

BAGHDAD-Iraq’s largest Sunni mosque, dedicated to the revered Imam, Abu Hanifeh, has a new addition. It is not, however, a space to accommodate more worshipping faithful. It’s a space to lay the bodies of civilians killed in the U.S. invasion last April.

Several members of the Christian Peacemaker Team visited the mosque in Baghdad’s Al-AaDamiyha district recently and were met by Mohammed, who described himself as a “servant of the mosque.” He took them to five tidy rows of graves, some quite small. Speaking through a translator, he read some of the tombstones.

“Here this is the tomb of a woman, her name Aqadeth Naji. It says she was killed on 10th April 2003, with her son, a child. His name is Natha Ayab Natha. They were killed from bombing her house…This is the grave for the small girl. Her name is Ala Mohammed Hassan Hatumini. She was killed on 11th of April, 2003, playing in the streets…and this is another child killed …and this man’s name was Ma’mhoud Nasaid Sa’id…and…”

With a tight lid on his anger, he recounts that “the cemetery was opened on April 10 and on that first day we could bury 20 persons. They came again on the 11th of April and they attack the cemetery near the mosque and they bombed the buildings around the mosque, even though there was no resistance. There were two more killed on that day that we could bury. After that, each day we could bury two or three murders and so far we have about 50 murders. All of them killed by coalition forces, by U.S. troops.”

Beginning at 4:00 am on that April morning, and continuing until 11:30 am, Mohammed said, U.S. Marines, artillery and aircraft attacked the mosque, “broke in the door and damage the hall where the tomb of Abu Hanifeh is,” even though the resistance was civilian, not military, and was outside, not inside the mosque. “Because Baghdad fell in the hands of the invaders on April 9,” he added, “there was not any kind of military or special guards or any kinds of army.”

During the battle, Mohammed continued, tanks entered the narrow streets around the mosque, “and many cars for civilians were damaged from tanks passing over them. The coalition forces burned many buildings around the mosque and you can see that. When the battle was over, a military airplane bombed the clock tower.” Bricks scattered in the cemetery matching the clock tower fa�ade and blackened commercial buildings across the street bear silent witness.

On that spring day last year, Mohammed said he counted seven U.S. armored vehicles burning. How many soldiers died, he cannot say. Today, the damaged mosque doors have been replaced, repair scaffolding surrounds the clock tower, and all is quiet in the new addition to the Abu Hanifeh mosque.

Ferner spent the month of February, 2003 in Iraq, with Voices in the Wilderness, a Chicago-based campaign to nonviolently resist economic and military warfare against Iraq. He returned recently to write about the current situation. He is a member of Veterans for Peace and works for the Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy.

© Feb. 5, 2004 by Mike Ferner