On this day but Seventeen years ago, hundreds of innocent Iraqi civilians were hiding from the American terror bombardments in a bomb shelter in Amiriya neighborhood west of Baghdad. They didn’t know that the craws were hovering over the building. They children were playing, women were chatting and praying for safety and the elderly were either reading or praying too. Then, a sudden shock, huge fire and then everyone melted on the floor and the walls.
The shelter was destroyed with the people hiding in it by two American laser-guided "smart bombs" on 13 February 1991 during the Gulf War, killing more than 408 civilians.
Seventeen years have passed and that tragedy never left Iraqis’ minds. It never made them forget the brutality and the crime. Seventeen years ago, the whole world stood silent. The world let America lead them to make the remaining living Iraqis they didn’t kill starve for twelve years. Twelve years of deprivation of food and medicine. Twelve years of thousands of tragedies.
And now after seventeen years, the tragedy has crossed the shelter’s walls and entered every civilian's house.
To the souls of the martyrs of the Amriya shelter who were murdered on the same hands that murdered Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I still remember you and will never forget you or forget what happened to you. May those who threw the missiles on you never feel peace. Ever.
Due to this, we will remember them in silent thought -
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may they rest in peace.
ReplyDeletevery moving video.
It's amazing, the things I learn just reading your blog.
ReplyDeleteI remember the tragedy of the shelter bombing. When I heard that U.S. bombs had killed so many civilians, especially the women and children, I felt very bad. Someone chose to target that shelter for some reason. But, they were so very wrong!
ReplyDeleteAt that time, I was supporting the war. I thought Saddam's invasion of Kuwait was wrong. However, I was also thinking of my friend Samir from Baghdad, who I had met a few years earlier. He was an amazingly friendly and very nice person. I wondered if an American bomb fell on him or his loved ones. The thought that he might die made me very sad.
War is a terrible thing. However, what is worse, I think, is that each generation seems to forget the suffering from wars of previous generations, and so, the horrible cycle of human conflict repeats over and over again.
here is another rememberance A Night of Infamy
ReplyDeleteThe full number has never been established as the register was destroyed in the inferno. With the 1991 carpet bombing at its height, it is known the Shelter was especially full. With its normality of showers, washing machines, a large communal kitchen and generators to operate them - and electricity off all over Baghdad - women and children went there to prepare for the feast of Eid the following day. The night of the bombing was also the eve of Saint Valentine's Day and that of the anniversary of the fire bombing of Dresden.
Three days before the Shelter bombing, Dick Cheney, and General Colin Powell visited the Air base at Khamis Mushat, Saudia Arabia (slogan: “bombs are us” and “we live so others may die”). After a pep talk to troops, they both signed two thousand pound bombs: “To Saddam with fond regards”, wrote Cheney (“A General's War”, General Bernard Traynor and Michael Gordon, Little Brown, p324.)
Where does one start in honoring the dead? Or counting the numbers of people who have died in one place over a certain amount of time? How far back in time does one choose to go? Which nationality deserves more rights of victims than another? Who is to say that the innocents of one country in one age merit more or less consideration than others from previous ages in other cultures?
ReplyDeleteSpeaking as one who lives in Japan, I am here during the August commemoration of the atomic bombings. I am not sure how much of this commemoration is a political thing and how much is really furthering the advance of peace in the world. We, speaking as a member of Japanese culture, remember "our" dead, our innocents much more frequently and with more tears than those of any other culture. Of course this is "natural". But is this nationalistic competition bringing us any closer together? How many killings or wars has the Nagasaki or Hiroshima bombings stopped? Are these unfair questions? Could you say that because of the Japanese commemorations the Americans would have killed more Iraqi civilians during the first Gulf War?
If we are to have world peace, that attitude, which too many consider normal, will have to change. We will have to identify with the sadness of the people of Amiriya, as well as with the victims of Israel, and Germany, and Russia and ? , and ? and ?. There must come a time when the average Arab will cry over the death of Jews; When the average Jew or Americans will cry over the deaths of Palestinian or Japanese or Chinese for there to a true conclusion to this. Until that happens we have not had enough.
Hey, darkness is not a force,
Darkness is nothing more than the absence of light. Light destroys darkness. Light is energy, power...darkness is merely its absence. Until we see that thoughts and plans for war are merely an absence of light. We will always be afraid of losing something.
This is called "thinking outside the box" From my experience here, few people do it.
"Someone chose to target that shelter for some reason."____I think it was supposed to be a shelter for the
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use of high up people in the Iraqi government.
I think it was supposed to be a shelter for the
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use of high up people in the Iraqi government.
you thought wrong. but, it sounds a lot better than slaughtering women and children. by the same token we could justify killing millions of iraqis, because we thought they were terrorists.
This is from the memoirs of Ala Bashir, Saddam's doctor, who was in Baghdad at the time.
ReplyDelete"Al-Amariya was, according to the neighbours, an air-raid shelter designated for the President's staff, but in the days before the outbreak of war the rules had been relaxed, allowing ordinary civilians to use it. The ceiling and walls of the bunker were two-metre-thick concrete, and anyone would feel safer there than at home."
He goes on to describe the horrors that he saw. He gives the death toll as 420.
("The Insider", pages 110-111)
I can't see any military or strategic reason why the US would deliberately target a shelter full of civilians. All that does is get you hated by everyone, as Al Qaeda is now. Why do anything so stupid (as well as wicked)?
I can see a good reason to target a shelter which intelligence tells you is designated for Saddam's staff. The tragedy of this event is that it did not occur to the civilians in the shelter that it would be a priority target, or perhaps they didn't know about laser-guided bombs.
But let's be clear about this: if it hadn't been for Saddam, there would have been no Gulf War, and nobody in that shelter would have been killed. Nobody asked him to invade Kuwait.
Edoriver:'When the average Jew or Americans will cry over the deaths of Palestinian or Japanese or Chinese'
ReplyDeleteI know that Americans crying over the deaths of innocents has actually driven support for wars in order to STOP more deaths. Think Sadaam's killing machine,his mass graves, his gassing of the Kurds and his posturing to kill more with his WMDs. Whether there were any or not is not relevant here. His posturing IS.
War IS ugly. I hate it and the only thing worse than war is watching dictatorial bullies kill innocents and not doing anything to try to stop it.
"There must come a time when the average Arab will cry over the death of Jews; When the average Jew or Americans will cry over the deaths of Palestinian or Japanese or Chinese for there to a true conclusion to this. Until that happens we have not had enough."
ReplyDeleteEdoriver that happened for the majority of the people on the 11 of September. You even had demonstrations in Iran for the victims. But what did the US government do and its supporters? They choose war over understanding, they choose war over a majority united world, they choose war instead of peaceful means, they choose terror by attacking Iraq and Iraqis who had done the US nothing at all.
We will always remember.
: (
ReplyDeleteBut let's be clear about this: if it hadn't been for Saddam, there would have been no Gulf War
But let's be clear about this:what did the US government do and its supporters? They choose war...
We will always remember.
yes we will.
http://alamriya.blogspot.com
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