by Tasgola Karla Bruner in Quetta, Pakistan
Sydney Morning Herald - Saturday, December 8, 2001
The talk on Thursday of an accord in Kandahar means little to
Rukia. She
has given up on peace in Afghanistan. She has five reasons, one
for each
of her dead children. Rukia, 39, who like many Afghans uses only
one
name, lost her family five days ago when she says a United States
bomb
hit her Kandahar neighborhood. Wounded in the stomach and with her
left
arm shattered, she had to flee before she could bury her children.
She
was nearly bombed again, while a relative was driving her to a
hospital
in Pakistan
"They're bombing anything that moves," she said.
"It's not true that
they bomb civilians by accident. They're targeting the innocent
people
instead of Osama bin Laden."
Just a little
human interest story taken from an article in the Nov/Dec issue of
Mother Jones that you won't read in their online editions.
******* Um Haidar was at home on the
morning of January 25, 1999 when one of those strikes occurred.
It was cold and gray outside, but Um Haidar recalls streaks of
sunlight breaking through the clouds. She was sitting on the
floor of her kitchen, helping her children with their
schoolwork. Haidar and his younger brother, Mustafa, were at the
market buying candy.
Without warning, an explosion shook
the house. The concussion shattered the window panes and threw
Um Haidar to the floor. After gathering her wits, she ran
outside, in search of her two boys. "There was smoke and
dust," she says. "I was paying no attention to
anything going on around me." Toward the end of the street
she came upon a pile of rubble. "I called out the boys'
names," she says. "Then I heard Mustafa calling,
'Mother! Mother!' His brother was lying next to him on the
ground in a pool of blood. I screamed Haidar's name. He never
answered me. Mustafa sat down. He said he was very tired. He had
blood all over his face." She grabbed the boy, waved down a
taxi, and took him to the hospital.
Mustafa lost two fingers. Bits of
metal had puncture his abdomen. He came home a month later.
"At first he was afraid of any sound, even a car passing or
something falling to the floor," Um Haidar says.
Washington admitted responsibility for the missile strike that
killed Haidar, saying the bombs had been intended for a military
target. ************* In another place in the article it
mentions how it is that the water and electrical utilities that
provided the towns needed utilities were targets of our missiles
and bombs as military targets because it so happens the military
also used the electrical grid and treated water from those same
sources. Many more Iraqi children and others die from the lack
of treated water supplies, simple infections, and diarrhea than
die from bombs and missiles.
Another quote from the article:
"Stunted children splash in stagnant canals and pools of
standing water rimmed with garbage, animal carcasses, and
excrement. The bacteria count in the city's water supply soars.
Infants drink formula diluted with filthy tap water. And the
morgue fills with the stench of the unforgotten dead."
Such was not the case before the sanctions placed upon Iraq by
our United States government.
Is it any wonder a gang of terrorists sprung up? Those people
have family, friends, and others that identify with them. If
these stories were broadcast, as the stories of Sept. 11 were, I
feel confident the American public would not stand for this
being done in our name. If we had taken another tact, such as
having called on kuwait to stop slant drilling into Iraqi oil
fields, through the UN courts, this might well have been
averted. But then the US govt. wanted to get rid of Saddam,
who's still in power. So stands the royal family of Kuwait,
thankful and obedient, and undemocratic as always. Afghanistan
and its people are being ripped to shreds again. Ossama?
After grace was said at the Thanksgiving dinner table with my
relatives, I reminded those seated that we'd forgotten the
victims of bombing, sanctions, and the SOA in our prayer. The
ensuing arguments raged as they did over many a table during the
Viet Nam conflict. The dialogue begins with us.
