Today, Aug. 19, 2010, would have been Abeer Gassim Hamza's 18th birthday.
Aug. 19, 2010 is a day of celebration for many Americans and US military in Iraq because they are leaving Iraq.
Abeer Gassim Hamza's family in Iraq is not celebrating either the US military's bugout or Abeer's birthday because they are all dead: in 2006, then-14 year old Abeer Gassim Hamza was gang-raped and killed by four or five US soldiers. Her parents and little sister were killed by the same US soldiers.
What noun describes the US military exit from Iraq -- not retreat, but not victory march, either.
Escape comes to mind.
US military personnel were outside the purview of Iraqi justice, but the men who raped and murdered Abeer and her family did not escape American justice; they have all been tried by either civilian or military courts in the US, and all are in prison. One of the Hamza family's murderers was sentenced to life in prison with not chance for parole; he is appealing his convictions. The others have been sentenced to terms ranging from 10- to 100- years in prison, but they can seek parole after 20 years.
The state of mind of one of Abeer Gassim Hamza's murderers is captured here:
Green was reacting particularly badly. He had always been a loudmouth, racist and misogynist. An evaluation form filled out by the Combat Stress team around that time is a horror show of ailments and dysfunctions. . . . One entry states, "Interests: None other than killing Iraqis."http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/24/war-crimes-us-soldiers-iraq
(It was chilling to read headlines in Israel's Haaretz newspaper quoting former IDF soldier Eden Abergil: "I would gladly kill Arabs, even slaughter them." Let's hope Abergil and her colleagues get the help they need before more people die senselessly.)
But back to Abeer Gassim Hamza -- her name first came to my attention when a poem by an Iraqi woman, Khawla, was posted on the Dissident Veteran's blog:
this ancient lion of ours
has been auctioned off.
proceeds will go to a charitable trust formed by the martin family.
one of these days
an iraqi is going to steal the mona lisa
and sell it for 57 million dollars
for the proceeds to go to a charitable trust formed by abeer qassim hamza's family.
and it will be a popular news item
for many a web surfer to marvel at
and pat themselves on the back
for being informed.
perhaps they auction mesopotamia's artifacts
and protect mesopotamia's oil ministry
and write mesopotamia's constitution
and stand guard at mesopotamia's soil, rivers and skies
because the true owners
are too displaced
too tortured
too orphaned
too dead
to protect their own things themselves.
--the author is an Iraqi woman
The poem was written to commemorate the sale of a precious Mesopotamian artifact. The Lion is thought to have been carved 5,000 years ago in what is now Iraq and Iran, and has been at the Brooklyn Museum since it was acquired by Alastair and Edith Martin in 1948 from a site near Baghdad (ancient Babylon).
Kwahla wrote her reaction to the sale in the above poem.
In other blogs and comments, Americans expressed their reactions to the sale:
" Maybe while the troops are in Iraq we can have them looking for little statues in the houses they raid, and in the countryside so we can sell them to pay off our massive defense spending deficit.
Yay! Creative problem solving."
and,
"Where's my cut?"
Mesopotamia is the birthplace of civilization. It achieved high culture over 3000 years ago.
Since 1953 or 1981, depending on how one reckons, the US and Israel have used Mesopotamia as its battlefield in the Clash of Civilizations.
Je m'appelle Baghdad
Civilization lost.
Happy Birthday, Abeer Gassim Hamza, "Fragrant Flower." Rest in Peace.