Haider Hamza on the Iraq War

Last night I went to go see Haider Hamza, an Iraqi journalist, give a talk about his experiences covering the Iraq war both overseas and here in the US . Haider was born in Germany , first attended school in Bulgaria , and was living in Iraq during the US invasion in 2003. He came to New York as a Fulbright Scholar in 2005 and graduated last year from Columbia . During his time in the States, he has traveled all over, sometimes setting up a booth that says “Talk to an Iraqi,” simply to see what average Americans think about Iraq and the war.

During his talk at the U, Haider simply presented a slideshow of photos he’d taken in Iraq during the war. He showed us pictures from the beginning of the war of Iraqi children running up to see the US soldiers and give them high fives. There were pictures of holiday celebrations and incredibly gorgeous mosques. There was a picture of a husband screaming at a US soldier to shoot him- the soldier had attempted to search the man’s wife, and when she refused, he tried to arrest her. The husband insisted he be arrested too, because it was improper for his wife to be alone with the soldiers, and when they refused he screamed that they would have to kill him to take her. Another picture showed a group of nude Iraqi men kneeling on the ground while soldiers pointed guns at them. This picture was taken right after a US soldier was killed by Iraqi insurgents, and right before a friend of the dead soldier executed the Iraqi men. Some pictures showed tanks, car bombs, and exploding buildings. One showed rockets larger than people. There was a picture of three Iraqi men lying facedown on the ground, with their pants around their ankles, and large portions of their heads missing where they had been shot. These pictures were still clearly of humans, whereas the photos of Iraqis killed by white phosphorous (a chemical weapon used only by the US and Israel ) were so horrific the bodies looked like monsters, not people. Another photo of people showed a man laying on a sidewalk in a huge puddle of blood while pedestrians and cars continues to travel around him. Many pictures were of children and soldiers, because whenever there was fighting (according to Haider) the adults ran in the opposite direction, and children stayed to watch. One picture showed a smiling little boy selling bullets in front of a burning car.

Haider explained that for many of the young soldiers he met, the strain and fear associated with war made it difficult for them to tell right from wrong. He asked one soldier who had just smiled for a picture with a naked, captive Iraqi whose head was covered by a sandbag why he had wanted to take that photo. The soldier explained that his friend has just been killed by the Iraqis, and he wanted to take the picture to show his girlfriend he’d gotten them back for it. Haider acknowledged that this behavior was criminal but also to be expected in war.

He also discussed some of the aftermath of the US invasion. Apparently, all Iraqis who worked in government during the regime of Saddam and the Ba’ath Party were forbidden to hold power in the new democratic Iraq. This essentially meant that everyone with any government experience was ineligible- leading to the current situation, where most people in power are actually Iranians or professionals like surgeons and professors (who are very intelligent but lack appropriate experience). Because this governing body has not been very effective, the US recently started to allow former Ba’ath party members back into government positions. This reversal come much too late to fix matters however, because in the six years these officials have been barred from their positions many have joined Al Qaeda and other groups and become as dangerous as the US assumed they were initially.

Other concerns of Haider’s surrounded the violence Iraqi children are growing up in. He admits genuine fear for the next generation, who run towards battles to see the excitement, love to play with soldier’s guns, and join the militias at increasingly young ages. The children’s sense of right and wrong is developing in the same environment that causes soldier to make errors like posing for picture with naked captives. These same surroundings have clearly impacted Haider himself, as evidenced in his ability to switch back and forth between nightmarish stories of Iraq and comical anecdotes from the Oscars (he sat next to Meryl Streep) in mid-sentence. Regardless of when Obama finishes withdrawing our troops, we will be dealing with the effects of the war on all of the people involved for a long time to come.