By Anita David
Christian Peacemaker Teams

Last Monday, after a brief interview with a family, Greg and I went on a failed quest to obtain information on a disappeared man.

Today, Will and I return to the office of a small human rights organization for our second meeting with the mother and father of the man. The father carries the shopping bag holding copies of documents identifying his son. Will and I ask the parents to try to recreate the order in which they conducted their search. Their list:

Christian Peacemaker Teams

Details: On 25 June, 2005 in the village of Al-Shakh Hadid U.S. Marines staged a house raid on the home of Abdul-Hadi Al-Sumaida. His son, Mohammed, who is also the cousin to the current Ambassador from Iraq to the United Nations, Samir Sumaida’ie, let the Marines into the house. They asked him if the family had any weapons and he took them upstairs to show them the rifle owned by the family. Later the rest of the family was forced to go outside. After the Marines left the family discovered the body of Mohammed upstairs with a single bullet wound in the neck.

Action: Below is a sample letter you can use. Write, call or email your senator or representative letting them know you want a full investigation of this matter by the Senate and House Armed Services Committee. Let them know you want the many other cases of killings during house raids documented by human rights organizations in Iraq investigated as well. Let them know that killing innocent people will only fuel the insurgency in Iraq.

Additional Information: Use the following links for more information on this matter.

Iraq envoy accuses US of killing (BBC)
Or Ambassador says Marines killed his kin (San Francisco Chronicle)

Dr. Thamiz Aziz Abul Rahman, a General Practitioner at Al-Kena Rehabilitation Hospital in Baghdad. Al-Kena is the only hospital in Iraq that makes prosthetics and provides rehabilitation services. The hospital is critically under-funded and undersupplied.

Download PDF of “Iraqi Hospitals Ailing Under Occupation”

Dahr Jamail reports on the struggling health care situation in Iraq. The report surveys 13 Iraqi Hospitals, examines the actions taken by US military against hospitals and care workers that constitute war crimes as defined by the Geneva conventions, discusses and documents cases of US medical personnel complicit in torture through failures to document the visible signs of torture on their patients, and much more.

This report is endorsed by the B/Russell/s Tribunal, El Taller International, Asian Women’s Human Rights Council, Association of Humanitarian Lawyers, SOS Iraq, and Medical Aid for the Third World.

Download PDF Version of Iraqi Hospitals Ailing Under Occupation

Read the web version of Iraqi Hospitals Ailing Under Occupation

Reflections from a month in Iraq
by Joe Carr
Christian Peacemaker Teams

My month with the Christian Peacemaker Teams in Iraq gave me a much greater understanding of the U.S. occupation and my role in ending it.

Iraq is a very difficult place to be. A cloud of sadness and hopelessness hangs over the country; I couldn’t help but feel isolated and depressed for most of my time there. The security situation makes it difficult to go anywhere, and the heat and electricity problems keep daily life rather wretched. I struggled with boredom and inactivity as much as I did fear and insecurity.

by Greg Rollins
Christian Peacemaker Teams

I recently talked to a foreigner I know who lives in the Green Zone, Saddam’s old palace grounds in the centre of Baghdad. The Green Zone is about four kilometres long and two kilometres wide. It holds the biggest U.S. embassy in the world, the British embassy, along with several others, the Iraqi parliament and dozens of foreign organizations and contractors. The man I spoke to works for a telecommunications company. He said the Green Zone is like a prison. He wants to leave it and live else where in Baghdad but his company won’t let him.