Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

The war has not ended

In the aftermath of the Iraq conflict, the world's media have focused on the plight of Ali Ismail Abbas, who lost his arms to American bombs. But he is by no means the only victim. Phil Reeves takes a harrowing tour of Baghdad's hospitals

Thursday 24 April 2003 00:00 BST
Comments

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

Anyone watching the television news over the past week could be forgiven for thinking that the conflict in Iraq is done and dusted and that – after the loss of 160 British and American soldiers and an estimated 5,600 Iraqi soldiers and civilians – it falls into the category of another small victorious war.

Yes, we know there has been collateral damage. No one who has seen them could forget the horrifying pictures, published all over the world, of 12-year-old Ali Ismail Abbas, the boy who lost his parents after his house took a direct hit from an American bomb and whose arms were so badly burnt that they had to be amputated. But he has now been flown to Kuwait for treatment, after several newspapers launched appeals on his behalf. Consciences salved, we can all forget about the rest of the anonymous Iraqi dead and injured. Or can we?

In fact, as one Iraqi doctor told me: "There are many, many Alis. On the TV and in the newspapers you saw only one patient, but that's just show business. There are thousands of others with very severe injuries and thousands more with psychological damage."

Certainly, the war has not ended for Ali Mustapha. He still had his eyesight when the American tanks rolled into Baghdad and when Donald Rumsfeld stood up and chastised the world's press for giving too much attention to the chaos and anarchy on the streets and not enough to his liberation of the Iraqi people from a vile dictator. Now Ali is writhing in pain in a fly-blown Baghdad hospital in which his only comfort is the touch of his mother, Munar, who sits cross-legged on his iron bed in a black chador, desperately trying to soothe her son's fear and agony.

This is not easy for her. She can't stroke his face because the only exposed parts are a tuft of hair and a chin covered in three large red blisters. The rest of his head is wrapped in a large bandage. And much of his body is torn, battered and sore. Not that there was much of it in the first place: he is only five years old.

Nor has the war ended for 11-year-old Hanan Yusfieh, who lost her left foot on 15 April when she poked a stick at a device she found while herding sheep. Or for 12-year-old Ali Mahdi Kathum, whose left shoulder and arm were shredded when a bomb that he and some friends found in a street blew up on 19 April. He hasn't yet been told that the explosion killed his cousin and two friends. Or for 13-year-old Mohammed Sabbah, who picked up a grenade in the street last Friday – it blew off most of his right hand. And there are more, none of whom have much chance of first-class medical treatment in Kuwait – like the famous Ali with no arms.

These are children whose injuries will not be plastered over the world's newspapers, but whose lives have been hideously scarred through no fault of their own, beyond suffering from a natural tendency to be curious or playful. All have been maimed after the fighting between the US and Iraqi forces ended, and after President Bush had announced that they were free and that the good times could begin.

Ali Mustapha was blown up on 14 April because he and his siblings wanted to know more about an odd-looking object that had landed in his garden. The explosion also burnt and blasted the face of his younger brother Hassan, 13-year-old Yassin, another brother, and his sister Senab, 15. All of them are now in hospital elsewhere in Baghdad. "I just heard an explosion, a very loud explosion, and that was it," said Munar as she cools her little boy by waving a green plastic fan over his body. He is lying, wriggling unhappily on a rough cloth in a bare and grubby ward. Iraq hospitals are not pleasant places.

Ali's medical papers say that he was blinded, injured in the chest and upper and lower limbs and suffered damage to brain tissue. They categorically state that this was caused by a cluster bomb, a device the Americans have admitted dropping, and which they used liberally in the 1991 Gulf War, but whose deployment against civilians is illegal under international law. This is very hard to prove definitively. Dr Emad al-Mashhadani, the chief doctor at Kadhimiya Academic Hospital, where Ali is being treated, has no doubts that this was the weapon. Nor has Ali's father, Mustapha, a labourer. The latter is a burly gentle-faced man who does not rage against the Americans and the British, as you might expect in these circumstances, beyond remarking softly that they use "strange" weapons. It appears that he does not want to say anything that might spoil the chances of getting help for his boy. "All I want is some treatment for him, any help from anywhere in the world that can make him see again."

His son is one of a number of children lying in misery in the hospitals of Baghdad. More are certain to follow as there is a great quantity of ordnance and abandoned Iraqi weaponry lying around and very little sign at street-level of efforts by the American forces to warn people – especially children – not to touch it. On Monday, Jay Garner, the retired US general in charge of putting this country back together again, swept into the city in an armoured convoy to see the situation for himself for the first time.

Accompanied by a selected pool of TV cameras and reporters, he went to Baghdad's Yarmuk hospital. Much was made in the ensuing reports of the fact that he had gone to see a hospital damaged by US bombing. The following day I paid it a visit. We were told that it held none of the children who have been injured after the war.

There are many more cases that the general is unlikely to see or hear about. Iraqi doctors say that a significant number of injured children have been discharged from hospitals prematurely and, though ill and in pain, taken home. They are now lying in agony and at severe risk of infection somewhere among the back-street hovels of Baghdad or the outlying villages. They have been removed by their parents because of the shooting and looting that raged around the hospitals after the fall of Baghdad, which only began to tail off when US troops belatedly arrived to protect them. Even now, there is regular looting and gunfire in Baghdad, although less than before.

"On the day after the fall of Baghdad, half our patients ran away," said Dr Mashhadani. "The parents refused to allow their children to stay. We tried to reassure them, but they didn't believe us. We had one case of a five-year-old boy who was injured by a bomb that had killed four of his brothers. His father told us that he would much rather his son died peacefully at home than here in the hospital."

He said some of these patients were in need of follow-up operations. But efforts to trace them are likely to be difficult, not least because of the chaos that has descended on Baghdad's hospitals, where staff are struggling to cope with shortages of equipment, electricity and, in some cases, water. According to Dr Mashhadani, no one listed their addresses, recording only their names and general neighbourhoods

Dr Muamar el-Shalla, the chief resident doctor of Baghdad's Al-Karkh hospital, told a similar story. He is a young, usually vigorous man of 30, but he looks exhausted, having spent night after sleepless night patrolling his hospital armed with a Kalashnikov, which he fired over the heads of the waves of looters trying to get in. "There are many, many sick people who are now at home, but who should be here," he said. "They need antibiotics, fresh dressings, fluids – none of which are available at home. At the beginning, we have had 65 cases of people leaving early. We have had patients who have had operations and then leave, returning again for out-patient treatment because they have infected wounds."

There is an unexpected and nasty twist to this phenomenon. Beds formerly occupied by the victims of the war and its aftermath – who fled the hospital through fear – now contain young Iraqi looters who are being treated for injuries, often bullet wounds, which they have received in fights with other looters over the spoils. "We have to treat them, of course," said Dr el-Shalla. "We are doctors. We treat everybody, even suspected looters." But – having seen shooting down the corridors of his own hospital, and a patient flung to the ground by people stealing his bed – he makes no secret of his distaste.

Unlike many Iraqis, and despite what he has seen over the past two months, Dr el-Shalla is not particularly critical of the Americans. He believes that they have liberated the country from an oppressive regime, although it is hard to make a final judgement on this because no one knows what the future holds.

So there is no sign of any particular bias or axe-grinding when the doctor relates details of the worst case that his hospital has had to deal with of a post-conflict arms accident involving children. He said that a few days ago two boys, aged about six, were killed and two others injured after one of them snatched a grenade from a US soldier's belt and pulled out the pin. He doesn't blame the soldier, pointing out that as the American troops increasingly patrol the streets on foot they are being engulfed by Iraqi children eager to play with them and to inspect their gear.

The same tolerance and open-mindedness were evident in a doctor who showed me through the corridors of the Al-Adnan hospital, a concrete monolith on the banks of the Tigris. He is a thoughtful and articulate man who trained in London and Edinburgh, a man who calls himself a liberal democrat and who is still too frightened of what might happen next in Iraq to allow a British newspaper to use his name.

These Iraqi medical men are not ideologues or propagandists. In fact, only a week ago this particular doctor was very nearly killed by an American tank out on the streets – it fired dozens of bullets into his car as he was travelling to work early in the morning. "I took them by surprise. They didn't see me. It was a mistake." He still has fragments of glass in his head.

We do the rounds together, meeting one horribly injured child after another. He shows me Hanan Yusfieh, the sheep-herding girl who has lost her foot. She is an emaciated pale child, curled up on her bed staring up with eyes so tired and dead that they appeared almost to be cynical.

He shows me a two-year-old boy with a severely injured arm, called Hamed Sabar, whose mother is – like that of Ali Mustapha – sitting cross-legged on his bed, trying desperately to soothe the pain. Finally I tell the doctor that I can no longer stand it, and ask how he stops himself from cracking up. "Ah, we get used to it," he replies, "We have to. We know that there is more of this for months to come."

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in