[lit-ideas] Re: Willie Pete, well, okay, a little bit

  • From: Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 09:34:58 -0500

Some articles on Saddam's treatment of raw conscripts, including many elderly and children (whose age is not surprising given the attrition of the Iran-Iraq War):

This from Gendercide Watch Group
http://www.gendercide.org/case_conscription.html

The gendercidal component has extended also to the domestic sphere, leading to horrific abuses against deserters and draft avoiders among the Iraqi male population. As the account below indicates, the degree of force necessary to drum up conscripts increased steadily after the "nationalist" war against Iran was replaced by the campaigns against domestic minorities and the Kuwaitis. A Reuters dispatch in 1994, in the aftermath of the Gulf War, profiled "Athir, a 22-year-old deserter from the Iraqi army, [who] was terrified he would be hunted down and have his ears or limbs chopped off." He accordingly "fled to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq to join a growing number of ex-soldiers there," where he told his tale:

"I deserted in September '93 and escaped through Mosul to Kurdistan this October because of the cutting off of ears and hands," he said through an interpreter ... Hundreds of deserters have fled to the north since Baghdad instated a law in early September making desertion from President Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army punishable by the amputation of ears, hands or feet, and the tattooing of their foreheads. A young doctor from a military hospital in Baghdad said 1,700 mutilations had taken place up to mid-September, when he fled to Salahuddin in the north. "The deserters were collected and sent to hospitals, where we would cut off one or both of their ears -- or rather the outer part of the earlobe because the whole ear is so difficult," said the doctor who called himself Dr. Kamal. "We had to perform the operation whether or not local anaesthetic was available," he said. "Some also had their hands amputated from the wrist or their feet cut off. Some had lines or crosses tattooed on their foreheads.

"The deserters are sent to us by the military court, they go to jail and are tried afterwards," he said. "They come to us tied up, their hair cut. Some panic and scream, some are too scared to. They are unclean and unhealthy, many are psychologically ill and suffer from diseases such as scabies. They are shoved into crowded cells and no treatment is allowed once they leave us, even though there is often severe bleeding after 24 hours and swelling and infection." Military doctors who dared to refuse to perform the operation were dealt with very severely, he said. Some were executed. Those who do the operations fear tribal retribution. ... [one officer who deserted] said there were few deserters during the 1980-1988 war with Iran. He said soldiers began deserting because of Saddam's "foolish behaviour" since, including his 1990 invasion of Kuwait and campaigns against Iraqi people such as the Kurds and Shi'ite Moslems. Many had deserted because they could not afford to support their families, he said. (Suna Erdem, "Iraqi army deserters go north to escape mutilation," Reuters World Report, October 31 1994.)

------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html

Other related posts:

  1. Home
  2. lit-ideas
  3. Archive
  4. 11-2005