Shanty Town Despair

Kassra and Attashis - “Broken and Thirsty” in Arabic - lies on the very edge of Baghdad and at first sight looks like one of the many sprawling garbage dumps that disfigure the Iraqi capital. It is a forlorn, sun-baked wasteland of crumbling mud huts surrounded by piles of scrap metal and bright green lakes of raw sewage.

On one side, a child is drinking from a broken water pipe fished out of the sewage. On another, a woman is sifting through a heap of rubbish, picking out and emptying the plastic bags. She sells them, she explains, to support herself and her daughter.

Kassra and Attashis is the furthest extremity of the sprawling Shia suburb that the old regime called Saddam City, but that was renamed Sadr City after Saddam’s fall, in memory of a much-loved Shia religious leader assassinated by the regime. Many of the people living here were displaced from the marshes of southern Iraq after Saddam drained them to punish Shia in the region for supporting a popular uprising against him in 1991.

Nearly 300,000 Marsh Arabs were killed or forced to leave the area, home to a unique culture and complex ecosystem between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that lasted for thousands of years. Many others disappeared.

The marshes today are a salt-encrusted desert inhabited by barely 20,000 people. Human rights groups have called the attack on the region and its people genocide, and have said it should form part of a war crimes dossier if Saddam is ever captured and brought to justice.

As the displaced marsh-dwellers arrived in Baghdad, Saddam issued a law forbidding them to buy lands, thereby making it impossible for them to live off the land. Some turned to crime. Others - a minority - work as shepherds, selling milk and cheese. A few live on the charity of friends and neighbours.

There are almost no men in this desolate place. Most households are headed by widows who lost their husbands either in the war against Iran or in the war in the marshes. Few children go to school: they have to contribute to their family’s income - either by hawking simple items, begging or searching the rubbish, from dawn until dusk, in hope of finding something valuable to sell.

As American forces completed their conquest of Baghdad in April, members of the Fedayeen of Saddam militia attacked Kassra and Attashis for no apparent reason. Hessna Ghata's husband died from a bullet wound in the one-room hut where he lived with his 10 children - six girls and four boys. The children saw him die.

“We don’t know why they came here,” Hessna said. “We are poor people. We cause no harm.”

Hessna’s neighbour, whose little girl almost lost a foot from an infected rat bite, shrugged. “Saddam hated the Shia,” she said.

Since Saddam Hussein was toppled, and bad government was replaced by no government, the inhabitants of Kassra and Attashis have been visited only once - by a team from the humanitarian office of the Iraqi National Congress, a political coalition formerly based in London, led by Tamara Daghestani.

Daghestani’s frustration at the occupying forces’ slowness in responding to the need in Baghdad - and not just in extreme cases like that of Kassra and Attashis - was obvious.

“People are beginning to get really angry,” she said. “There is no security and almost no electricity. Saddam is winning the PR battle without having to lift a finger.”

Neda M. Shukur is an artist and freelance writer.