Local Iraqi Boy at Mass Gravsite, Karbala (Photo: CPT)

by Will Van Wagenen
Christian Peacemaker Teams

Recently we visited Karbala, the holiest city in Iraq for Shiite Muslims and the site of the shrine of the Imam Hussein, the grandson of the prophet Muhammad, who was martyred in Karbala in 680 CE. While there we visited Human Rights Watch of Karbala (HRWK), an Iraqi human rights organization founded on April 5, 2003, immediately after the fall of Saddam’s regime. It was the first organization to discover mass graves in the region, and has been involved in opening them, documenting the identities of the victims, and notifying the families of the victims’ whereabouts. Forty-one of the forty-three mass graves near Karbala date back to 1991, when Saddam crushed a Shiite uprising seeking to depose him shortly after the first Gulf War. Estimates of the total number of victims in mass graves throughout the country range as high as 300,000.

Because no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, the recently discovered mass graves have proven the best justification for the Bush Administration decision to go to war. Many Americans would agree with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman who commented that, “Once the war was over and I saw the mass graves and the true extent of Saddam’s genocidal evil, my view was that Mr. Bush did not need to find any W.M.D.’s to justify the war for me.”

But unlike Friedman, many of those Iraqis whose relatives were murdered and dumped in these mass graves had something other than praise for the US government. As one Iraqi from HRWK told us, “The US let Saddam’s regime do what it did and therefore the massgraves are also the responsibility of the United States. For this reason we don’t believe the US came [in 2003] to bring freedom to Iraqis.” A quick investigation into the events of the Shiite uprising in`91 reveals why this is the case. Though the US expelled the Iraqi Army from Kuwait and bombed Iraqi cities extensively, US forces stopped short of going on to Baghdad and deposing Saddam, calling instead on Iraqis to overthrow him. The Iraqi Shiites responded, rising up against Saddam en masse, with the expectation of receiving US support. Much to the Shiites’ horror, US troops instead merely watched as Saddam mercilessly crushed the uprising. According to Richard A. Clark, former National Coordinator for Security and Counter-Terrorism and longtime member of the National Security Council Staff, the US also lifted the no fly restrictions on Iraqi military helicopters, which “mowed down the rebels” as “US forces stood by.”

Our host from HRWK stated that many residents of Karbala saw US planes flying above Saddam’s helicopters as they attacked the Shiite rebels, and that these US planes did not intervene. After Saddam’s helicopters had done their job, the Iraqi security forces rounded up thousands in mass detentions in a further effort to quell the uprising, taking them to locations outside the cities, where they were shot and buried.

Richard Perle, a Republican and member of the current Defense Policy Board, as well as one of the main architects of the 2003 US invasion, had this to say about why the US supported the massacre of the Shiites in 91 which created the mass graves: The first Bush administration had its reasons for holding back in 1991. When it had called for an uprising, it had something very different in mind: a coup in Baghdad by one of Saddam’s Sunni henchmen. This was and remained the remedy for Saddam recommended by the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA contended that the mass uprising in the south might bring to power Shiite extremists who would then tilt toward Shiite Iran.”

Despite acknowledging US complicity in the massacre of their friends and relatives, all the members of HRWK with whom we met were adamant that responding with violence to US complicity in the crimes against their fellow Shiites is against the precepts of Islam. As one HRWK member noted, “All the religions of the book came from the same source, and they share the idea of peace and mercy. We believe that the word “violence” should be eliminated from the dictionary of Muslims.” If only there were a few more of us Christians willing to eliminate this word from our dictionary as well.

Christian Peacemaker Teams is an ecumenical violence-reduction program with roots in the historic peace churches. Teams of trained peace workers live in areas of lethal conflict around the world. CPT has been present in Iraq since October, 2002. To learn more about CPT, please visit www.cpt.org. Photos of CPT projects may be viewed at www.cpt.org/gallery