Iraq's Legacy of Terror

Iraq’s Legacy of Terror MASS GRAVES U.S. Agency for International Development LO C ATIONS OF FIRST MASS GR AVES DISCOVERED IN IR AQ 40˚ 42˚ 44˚ 46˚ 48˚ Hakkâri Lake Urmia TURKEY Orumiyeh Mianeh Q (Urmia) ez el Zakhu O wz DAHUK an Al Qamishli Miandowab Dahuk Zanjan 'Aqrah Rayat Tall Al Mawsil 'Afar (Mosul) b Sinjar a Z t ARBIL May 9, 2003: Suspected a re Arbil mass grave in Kirkuk. 36˚ Ar Raqqah May 13, 2003: Suspected G 36˚ mass grave near Mosul. Kuysanjaq Al Qayyarah Makhmur NINAWÁ SYRIA As Sulaymaniyah Al Hadr ( AS Dayr az Zawr May 24, 2003: Suspected Kirkuk SULAYMANIYAH Sanandaj Hawija mass grave near between AT TA'IM Halabjah Kirkuk and Hawija. Tawuq Bayji T i g Tawuq r Hamadan is Tikrit IRAN uphrates SALAH AD Abu Kamal E 'Anah DIN Qasr-e Shirin Al Qa'im Samarra' Khanaqin Thartha - Kermanshah 34˚ Al Hadithah Lake 34˚ DIYALÁ Borujerd 'Akashat Ba'qubah Hit Al Ilam Khorramabad Ar Ramadi ( Fallujah BAGHDAD AL ANBAR Al Habbaniyah Baghdad May 13, 2003: Suspected Radwaniyah Salman Pak Mehran Ar Rutbah Al Mahmudiyah mass grave in Radwaniyah. Al Àziziyah Al Musayyib An Nu`maniyah Dehloran May 16, 2003: Two mass graves BABIL Al Kut visited north of Al Hillah. Shaykh Sa'd KARBALA' Al Hillah WASIT Dujaila 'Ali al Gharbi JORDAN May 5, 2003: Mass grave visited Dezful 32˚ near Al Hillah. 3km south of An Najaf Al Kufah MAYSAN Al Hayy 32˚ Al Hillah, 300m off highway Ad Diwaniyah Al 'Amarah Qal'at Sukkar T Abu Sukhayr i Al Halfayah g Al Jaàrah r AL QADISIYAH Ar Rifaì i May 28, 2003: Suspected Al Ghammas s Musayìdah mass grave in Musayeb. Al Kharm Al Majarr Ar Rumaythah al Kabir Qal'at Salih Qaryat al Gharab Ash Shatrah S G h Ahvaz a h t As Sulayb a ta rr l As Samawah af Ar'ar DHI QAR Al Qurnah AN NAJAF An Nasiriyah Duwa Suq ash Shuyukh Ash Shanin SAUDI ARABIA Jalibah Al Basrah As Salman AL BASRAH ( AL MUTHANNÁ Az Zubayr Safwan 30˚ Makhfar al Busayyah IR A Q Umm Qasr May 17, 2003: Mass grave near Al Faw Mass Grave Site Abu Hasib Fertilizer Factory. KUWAIT Rafha Located 20km SE of Al Basrah. Suspected Mass Grave Site Al Jahrah Kuwait 0 50 100 mi ( Original Map Courtesy of the UN Cartographic Section Persian Al Ahmadi Gulf The boundaries and names shown and the designations 0 50 100 150 km used on this map do not imply official endorsement or acceptance by the United Nations. SAUDI ARABIA 40˚ 42˚ 44˚ 46˚ 48˚ Mass Graves was edited by USAID Senior Writer Ben Barber with assistance from Stephen Epstein of USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives. Cover: Iraqis search for relatives and friends among victims found in a mass grave in Musayib, 75 kilometers southwest of Baghdad. The victims are thought to be from the 1991 uprising against the Iraqi government. The bodies, wrapped in linen shrouds, are being held in a makeshift morgue in a nearby youth center. All photos by USAID/ Thomas Hartwell except photo on inside back cover, which is by U.S. Department of State/ Sandra L. Hodgkinson. A Vast Human Tragedy In a decade and a half of humanitarian work As Saddam’s evil regime collapsed in April I have witnessed the aftermath of much human and May, 2003, and his Baath Party mass mur tragedy, including the Rwandan genocide and derers retreated into the shadows, Iraqis began the killing fields of Cambodia. In June 2003, to act on their formerly hidden grief. They I visited Iraq’s mass graves, the most recent searched for their loved ones rounded up over addition to mankind’s legacy of mass murder. the years in campaigns of terror. They had heard rumors about shots in the night, mass Rows of white bundles containing bones filled burials, and vanished prisoners. Now they room after room. Families filed by, searching for followed those bloody trails to the mounds of signs of those who had disappeared, some stolen earth they suspected entombed their beloved during the night, others taken in daylight. Even children and parents. small children were not spared the butchery. The new leaders in Al Hillah, Karbala, Najaf, The graves that Saddam Hussein’s henchmen and a dozen other cities and towns around Iraq dug and filled with human beings are a bitter worked with U.S. and British forces to try and sign that mankind still has a long way to go protect some of the mass graves. We hope to before every person has the basic human rights preserve the evidence of these crimes against promised by all our religions and cultures—the humanity. rights of life and liberty. Human rights groups have formed, assisted Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told the by USAID and working with the Coalition United Nations that under Saddam Hussein, Provisional Authority, to urge people to Iraq was “a murderous tyranny that lasted over record the names of those being exhumed and 35 years.” “Today we are unearthing thousands describe the circumstances under which they of victims in horrifying testament,” Zebari said. were seized and slain. I walked across the sandy plains of Iraq and Yes—people want to find the remains of their saw the mass graves that were just found and loved ones and give them a proper burial in are beginning to yield their tragic secrets. The consecrated ground. But the Iraqi people also bones tell a story of horror and shame: arms want justice—to punish those who callously bound together, skulls pierced from behind. killed their fellow citizens by the busload, day Hundreds in one long trench. after day, year after year. Those who survived inside Iraq, and those who Above all, if people in Iraq and around the watched helplessly from abroad, have joined world hope to learn from the crimes of the past, together to begin the long, painful process of the mass graves of Iraq must be documented, accounting for the dead. British Prime Minister reported, and never forgotten or denied. Tony Blair said on November 20, 2003, that as many as 400,000 Iraqis lie in these mass graves. This booklet is a small, early marker on that path. y aged r They are Kurds, killed because of their ethnicity. T They are Shiites, killed because of their religion. They are Sunnis, killed for their political views. Human They are Egyptians, Kuwaitis, and Iranians, Andrew Natsios, Administrator ast killed because their lives meant nothing to U.S. Agency for International Development Saddam Hussein, his sons, and their followers. January 2004 A V 1 Iraq’s Mass Graves A victim, still blindfolded, found in a mass grave in Musayib. A LEGACY OF TERROR REPORTS OF MASS KILLINGS Since the Saddam Hussein regime was overthrown in May, Beginning in the 1980s, reports of mass murder began 270 mass graves have been reported. By mid-January, filtering out of Iraq. Saddam’s Baathist loyalists and 2004, the number of confirmed sites climbed to fifty-three. police rounded up members of the Dawa party—they Some graves hold a few dozen bodies—their arms lashed were never heard from again. Human rights groups said together and the bullet holes in the backs of skulls testimo 180,000 ethnic Kurds were rounded up and killed in the ny to their execution. Other graves go on for hundreds of Anfal campaign in which hundreds of mountain villages meters, densely packed with thousands of bodies. were destroyed. Those left alive were moved into bleak collection cities that still dot the plains between Kirkuk “We’ve already discovered just so far the remains of and Sulaymaniyah. It was a crime so staggering that, 400,000 people in mass graves,” said British Prime without hard evidence of bodies to back it up, many Minister Tony Blair on November 20 in London. The refused to believe it possible. United Nations, the U.S. State Department, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch (HRW) all Then in 1988 came the use of nerve and mustard estimate that Saddam Hussein’s regime murdered hun gas against Iraqi-Kurdish civilians in Halabjah. Five dreds of thousands of innocent people. “Human Rights thousand were killed in a single day. The world was Watch estimates that as many as 290,000 Iraqis have shocked, but still, the missing people rounded up over been ‘disappeared’ by the Iraqi government over the the previous months and years remained vanished. or err past two decades,” said the group in a statement in May. T After the 1991 Gulf War, Shiites and Kurds revolted, “Many of these ‘disappeared’ are those whose remains but the rebellion was quickly crushed by Iraqi tanks are now being unearthed in mass graves all over Iraq.” acy of and troops loyal to Saddam Hussein. While Kurds got g e If these numbers prove accurate, they represent a crime protection from U.S. and British aircraft, creating an s L against humanity surpassed only by the Rwandan geno autonomous region in northeastern Iraq where they Iraq’ cide of 1994, Pol Pot’s Cambodian killing fields in the were safe from persecution, the Shiites were brutally 1970s, and the Nazi Holocaust of World War II. repressed in the south, and tens of thousands vanished. 2 The following pages include first-hand accounts from were randomly digging through the site. I went there three Iraqis who survived the mass murders. Each tells two days after the mass grave was discovered. what took place in a way that no formal report can “The site was very disturbed.

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