Iraq's Gravedigging Industry Is at 100% Full Employment
Amidst the soaring unemployment in Iraq, the gravediggers have been busy. So busy that officials have no record of the number of graves dug; of the real death toll, that is.
"I've been working here four years," a gravedigger who gave his name as Ali told IPS at the largest cemetery in Baghdad, a sprawling expanse in the Abu Ghraib section of the capital city. "In 2006 and some of 2007, we buried 40- 50 people daily. This went on for one-and-a-half years.
"Twenty-five percent of these were from violence, and another 70 percent were killed by the Mehdi Army (the militia of Shia cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr)." Only a few appeared to have died from natural causes.
"Most of the dead were never logged by anyone," Ali said, "because we didn't check death certificates, we just tried to get the bodies into the ground as quickly as possible."
Military Families Still Pay The Price
Do you know that a US serviceman or woman still is killed every other day in Iraq? That an Iraq War veteran takes his or her own life nearly every day?
The people I spent this weekend with in Washington, DC know these facts, up close and personal.
We are the members of Military Families Speak Out (www.MFSO.org). We keep “speaking out,” but it seems like no one is listening anymore. Our soldiers languishing in Iraq are forgotten amidst news of bailouts, economic stimulus packages, and talks of escalation in Afghanistan.
We came from across the US – from California, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Louisiana, Alabama, Wisconsin, Illinois, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and other places I can’t recall.
We held a briefing downtown for the media and Congress. Practically no one came.
We walked in solemn procession from Arlington Cemetery to the White House, carrying flowers for all the Iraqi dead, US military casualties, and surviving veterans. No one came.
It wasn’t a protest or demonstration. It was a gathering. It felt more like a small church meeting than a political event. People told stories about their loved ones who served or are still serving in Iraq.
One man told of having to cut his son down from the rafters in their home where he hung himself to death, another victim of untreated PTSD. The night before his death, his son asked this man to hold him in his arms. The father rocked him in his lap. The next morning, he held his dead body on his lap. The government does not recognize them as a Gold Star family because their son did not die in the war.
Then there was the young veteran who told of having to photograph dead bodies every day as part of his job in military intelligence. He described what it felt like when he unearthed his first mass grave. Images that will remain seared in his consciousness for the rest of his life.
