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Under Fire
By: James Brandon
Published date: 4/8/2003
HILLA –– An unprecedented spate of lethal highway attacks against international aid agency vehicles near Hilla have led humanitarian organisations in Iraq to review and reduce their activities.
On July 20, a white pickup truck pulled alongside two vehicles belonging to the International Organization for Migration which were traveling on Highway 1 from Baghdad to Hilla. A man armed with a Kalashnikov fired repeatedly at the rear vehicle.
The clearly marked IOM vehicle then crashed into a bus and flipped, killing the Iraqi driver and leaving a foreign aid worker injured. The lead IOM car was then shot at, and it too overturned.
Two days later, a car belonging to the International Committee of the Red Cross was fired upon by the occupants of an identical white pickup truck as it made its journey to Baghdad on Highway 8.
This time Nadisha Yassari Ranmuthu, a 37 year-old ICRC communications engineer from Sri Lanka was killed. The Iraqi driver of the car, Mazen Hamed Rashid, was badly wounded.
“We are shocked,” said Nada Doumani, the Baghdad spokeswoman for the ICRC. “We've done our utmost in this country since 1980. Our emblem should be enough to protect us. I don't know how we can explain this.”
These recent attacks have shattered the confidence of the many humanitarian organizations in Iraq, and may force all non-governmental organizations in the region to increase their security procedures and reduce their humanitarian activities.
While the exact motive for the attacks is a mystery, the UN Deputy Spokesman for the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Iraq, Hamid Abel Jaber said that many Iraqis “link the UN to the sanctions which caused so much suffering to the Iraqi people, while others say that the UN did not speak out enough about the human rights violations by the previous regime.”
Abdel Jaber explained that UN weapons inspectors were widely seen as “interfering” in Iraq's internal affairs. He warned that “the situation could develop negatively at any moment.”
Neither the IOM nor the ICRC are part of the UN, and both are independent of the American-led military occupation.
Up to this time, both the IOM and ICRC enjoyed good relations with the Iraqi people and neither they nor the UN were aware of any previous problems between NGOs and the local population in the Hilla and Babil region.
A UN worker was willing to discuss the incident on condition of anonymity.
“Someone was deliberately targeting international aid organizations. You can really damage everyone by killing UN staff. It makes the CPA look stupid because they are the interim government and supposedly responsible for security. It also makes the military look stupid.
“Moreover, the NGOs are soft targets and easy to kill. The Iraqis behind this cannot quite understand why the UN should react so severely to two NGO members being killed but it entirely suits their purposes. The coalition would be seriously damaged if they withdrew.”
The area around Hilla was heavily attacked during the war. On the night of April 1 alone, 33 civilians were killed as the Americans used cluster bombs in their attempt to capture the road to Baghdad. Further deaths occur regularly from unexploded bombs dropped by the Americans.
The politicized nature of the attacks may be indicative of a growing hostility to Westerners across the country and particularly in the area around Baghdad.
The short-term consequences of these incidents are already being felt by Iraqis. In the three days following the attacks the ICRC withdrew its foreign aid workers from Hilla and restricted activity and movement, while the security situation was reassessed.
“We cannot take any further risks,” said Doumani.
This could be the first stage of a wider reduction to the ICRC mission which numbers 850 persons countrywide.
“(The latest attack) will hinder the humanitarian activities in Iraq, especially when it is a humanitarian worker with no political issues who is killed,” said Qusai Al-Mafraji, head of the Dissemination Department of the Iraqi Red Crescent.
Although the IRC has had its vehicles looted and its employees threatened during the war and its aftermath, it has never been the target of deliberate attacks.
At a press conference on July 29, a spokesman for the coalition blamed the attacks on remnants of the former regime. He reiterated the claim that the attackers sought to harm the welfare of ordinary Iraqis rather than to protest against the continuation of the American-led occupation .
Published date: 4/8/2003
Author: James Brandon
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