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Iraqi Survivors Tell of Mass Graves

NEW YORK—A young Iraqi man who crawled out of a mass grave—the only known survivor of an estimated 182,000 Iraqi Kurds murdered in 1988 as part of Saddam Hussein's Anfal campaign—brought his story to America through a USAID-sponsored human rights visit in July.

"We were taken away in trucks—there was no air inside or water and some children died before we reached the end," said Taimour, whose last name was withheld because of security concerns.

Iraqis look at lists of names of victims unearthed from a mass grave in Musayib. Thomas Hartwell, USAID

"When we arrived, they opened the door and I managed to slip aside my blindfold. I could see the pit in the ground surrounded by soldiers. We sat in the pit and they fired bullets at us."

Taimour, who was 12 during the 1988 Anfal campaign that destroyed more than 1,000 Kurdish villages, was shot several times, but managed to escape into the desert where Bedouins and Shiite Arabs sheltered him for two years until he returned to the Kurdish northern area of Iraq.

When Saddam reportedly offered $1 million to anyone who would kill the only known survivor of these killings, Taimour was given asylum in the United States.

The Iraqis stopped in Washington, D.C., New York, Detroit, Los Angeles, and San Diego, and included Taimour, Iraqi-American Kurdish filmmaker Jano Rosebiani, and Ibrahim (last name withheld), the head of the Iraqi Free Prisoners Association and himself a torture victim of Saddam.

Rosebiani previewed his film, Saddam's Mass Graves, at many of the appearances. It was produced earlier this year with a grant from USAID.

Ibrahim, whose group was funded by USAID, has collected 164,000 names of Iraqis who were killed or were arrested and disappeared, mainly during the 1991 repression of the Shiites after the Gulf War.

"I spent several years in Saddam's prison," Ibrahim said, speaking through an interpreter. "They pulled out my toenails, gave me electric shock on my body, and hung me in painful ways."

In New York, the three Iraqis addressed Human Rights Watch, which first reported on the vast scale of killings by Saddam Hussein's regime; U.N. diplomats and NGO officials; and foreign journalists at State Department-sponsored Foreign Press Center briefings.

The Agency's abuse prevention officers have helped Iraqis protect and excavate mass graves and collect lists of the estimated 300,000 people in the mass graves to help heal Iraqi society, Administrator Andrew S. Natsios told the U.N. diplomats and NGOs.

"I wish them all the best of luck as they continue to tell the story of this regime, and what this regime did to its own people," said Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in a private meeting with the three Iraqis at the State Department, "and as they now not only tell about the past, but as they look to the future—as they build a new Iraq founded on respect for the dignity of human beings."

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Sudan Crisis Worsens

Some 30,000 to 50,000 Sudanese have died so far, as Arab Sudanese militias continue to attack, rape, displace, and kill African Sudanese in the Darfur region, said Roger Winter, Assistant Administrator for the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance.

"Ethnic cleansing is the term I would use," said Winter, who met with displaced people on recent visits to Sudan. He said the Sudan government is supporting the militias financially and militarily.

"When I talk to people in Sudan, they say planes came and bombed them and then the Jingaweit [Arab militias on camels and horses] came and attacked," Winter said.

U.S. efforts to persuade the Sudan government to halt the violence have proved futile. Although both houses of the U.S. Congress voted to declare the Sudan crisis "genocide," Arab and other U.N. nations have watered down a U.S. resolution threatening sanctions unless Sudan halts the attacks.

Rains that began in June turned Darfur's "black cotton soil" into a sticky mess that clings to one's shoes and to truck tires, making movement of relief supplies overland all but impossible, Winter said.

The Agency's Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) has placed two aid workers in each capital of Darfur's three states and ten other staffers in the capital Khartoum. One more is in Chad, where about 100,000 Sudanese have fled to refugee camps.

More than 2 million people have been affected. Some 700,000 of them have received USAID-supplied plastic shelter materials, but people are falling victim to exposure and loss of strength due to their poor living conditions and lack of adequate food and water, Winter said.

U.S. aid to the Darfur crisis totaled $192 million as of August 13. The United Nations is asking for about $600 million in relief aid.

Costs will escalate rapidly as relief groups shift to moving supplies by air to escape the impassible roads. An official with the Darfur Response Management Team at the Agency headquarters in Washington, D.C., which communicates daily with the DART team in Sudan, said the Swiss were planning to ship food from Libya to Chad using trucks equipped to cross the Sahara desert.

Although the Swiss food was expected to arrive in Chad August 5, there was no way to reach the main body of displaced and needy people in camps inside Sudan, since the Chad-Sudan border remained closed to aid by both countries.

U.S. food aid lands at Port Sudan, but distribution is hampered by the rains, poor roads, and lack of security. Some of the increasingly isolated camps had already been stocked with several months of food supplies by USAID before the rains hit.

"People continue to deteriorate," said Winter. "To do this right, we need access and security. There have been some improvements in both, but they are still not good."

Administrator Andrew Natsios has said that 300,000 people will die unless there is an end to the attacks and a huge change in the ability of relief workers to care for the displaced.

"Although we have not got a government survey, this is still a reliable figure and a likely projection," said Winter pessimistically.

Recent reports tell of massive rape against young girls by the Jingaweit militias, mass killings of men who try to resist expulsions, destruction of nearly all the African Sudanese villages, poisoning of wells, and even burning alive of people who have been chained together.

The United Nations estimates from 10,000 to 30,000 people have been killed directly—aside from thousands who have died from hunger or disease.

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Ladies First Premieres

Women in Rwanda celebrate an engagement. Colette Kunkel, Thirteen WNET New York

Recovering from genocide and war, Rwanda is finally getting some positive attention. A documentary film featuring efforts of Rwandan women to achieve success was sponsored by USAID and shown to a crowded room at the Ronald Reagan building July 30.

Ladies First is the story of three Rwandan women—a city mayor, a coffee entrepreneur, and a parliamentarian—who are at the forefront of reconstruction and development in their country a decade after a bloody genocide that killed an estimated 800,000 people within 100 days.

One of the women profiled is Epiphanie Mukashyaka. She lost her husband in the genocide, but kept the family coffee farm going. With USAID assistance, she was even able to build a mill to clean coffee beans.

Mukashyaka's coffee was recently judged by one of the world's top coffee tasters, Ken Davids, as the most exceptional coffee among new coffee varieties.

"We are keenly aware of the effect of conflict on women," said Katherine Blakeslee, director of USAID's Office of Women in Development. "Yet today, women in Rwanda are building, governing, and healing their country," she added.

Women now hold 48 percent of seats in Rwanda's lower house of parliament—the highest percentage in a parliament anywhere in the world.

Women also constitute 90 percent of the country's agricultural workforce.

Ladies First aired on PBS July 22, and will be repeated several times through October 9.

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Afghanistan Three boys wait for the next shift to begin at the Naou Behar middle school in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-I-Sharif. The school was rehabilitated under a USAID program that provided carpenters, paint, roofing materials, and other aid. The school's enrollment has exploded since U.S.-led forces ousted the extremist Taliban theocracy two years ago—from 400 to 2,500 students today—according to Ghulam Yahiya, the head of the school. The increase came after 3.7 million Afghan refugees and displaced persons returned voluntarily to their homes, the Taliban ban on girl's education was removed, and Afghans showed a new interest in education. A detailed report on Afghanistan's progress, to appear in the October issue of FrontLines, is being prepared by the FrontLines Editorial Director, who just spent three weeks traveling around the Asian country of 25 million. Stories will focus on the private building boom, the tripling of school enrollment, the first Afghan elections, improving health care and declining mortality among children and women, the restoration of women's rights, and improved roads and other services.