Viewpoint
Batul’s unique perspective on two nations
By COLMAN McCARTHY
For moral guidance, as well as
political counsel, on U.S.-Iraq relations, I have been listening lately to
Batul Al-Zubeidy. She knows firsthand of the death-dealing policies of both
violent governments. Both the United States and Iraq saw her life as
worthless.
Batul Al-Zubeidy is 18. Since September, she has been one of my
students at the School Without Walls, a District of Columbia public high school
where I volunteer. Five blocks from the White House -- no school is closer --
the structure has no cafeteria, gym, auditorium, lockers or playing fields. But
quality teachers are serving, for which the students are grateful.
Among the school’s 75 seniors, none had as perilous a path to
its front door as Batul. The youngest of eight children, she was born in 1984
in the Abu Ghreeb prison near Baghdad. Her mother, Salima, was a political
prisoner. Her crime was being the wife of Hamza Al-Zubeidy, a risk-taking
political organizer who publicly opposed Saddam Hussein during the 1980s when
the dictator was a Ronald Reagan ally and U.S. weapons client.
In that decade and the next, Hamza Al-Zubeidy spent more than 15
years in and out of Iraqi prisons, ones known to be among the world’s
meanest and filthiest torture chambers. Freed in 1990, he returned to his
family in Najaf, a Shiite holy city south of Baghdad. Within months,
night-raiding American pilots bombed the Al-Zubeidy home, along with much of
the neighborhood and nearby bridges, water and electric plants. Had Batul and
her family been home during this American killing spree -- the family was away
visiting relatives -- they would likely have been among the scores of
Najaf’s dead or maimed.
Suddenly destitute, and fearing reprisals from Saddam
Hussein’s military intent on squashing opposition, the Al-Zubeidys fled.
Beginning in March 1991, they walked more than 200 miles with thousands of
other Iraqis to the makeshift Rafha refugee camp in northern Saudi Arabia. The
travelers were often at the mercy of Saddam Hussein’s shock troops who --
as the Los Angeles Times reported in March 1991 -- were paid bounties to
kill refugees.
During the next six years of Batul’s childhood, she was one
of 32,000 people confined to a camp where death, disease and fear were rampant,
and water, food and health care scarce. With barbed-wire fences, watchtowers
and armed Saudi soldiers as guards, the camp was little more than a maximum
security prison. In 1994, a report from Amnesty International told of “the
arbitrary detention of refugees, their torture and ill-treatment -- in some
cases resulting in death in custody -- possible extra-judicial executions and
the forcible return of others to Iraq. Various forms of collective punishment
have been systematically used against the refugees.”
By August 1993, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees had
resettled 6,288 of the original 32,000, sending them to Iran, Scandinavia, the
United States and other countries. The Al-Zubeidys’ turn would not come
until 1997.
On arrival in Washington the following year with her family, Batul
spoke no English, had no teenage friends and had not been in a classroom since
first grade in Iraq. That she now speaks perfect accent-free colloquial
English, is a student leader, is thriving in her courses, is taking three
college classes, including one in Hebrew, and volunteers for an antiwar group
is a story of gritty resilience and self-motivation like few others I have
known in 20 years of teaching.
“Two governments didn’t care whether I lived or
died,” Batul said. “In Najaf, I was at the other end of the U.S.
bombing runs. Walking 200 miles through the summer desert to get to the Rafha
camp, Iraqi soldiers regularly shot at us.”
Politically, Batul is opposed to the Iraqi government. “I
would love to see a change to democracy but I don’t believe that a war by
the United States will bring that change. It certainly hasn’t brought
democracy to Afghanistan where civilians were killed and warlords now dominate.
I don’t think the Bush administration wants to help the Iraqi people. If I
did believe that, I would need to ignore the full story. U.S. officials know
that the economic sanctions for the past 12 years have helped kill more than a
million Iraqis, especially children. Does the U.S. government really think
that’s the way to win friends in Iraq? The sanctions aren’t hurting
Saddam Hussein.”
In addition to taking English as a Second Language courses, Batul
began reading American newspapers and watching television news programs to
learn English. She is dismayed by the largely uncritical acceptance by the
media to the Bush war plans against Iraq. “A war will only cause more
destruction, more refugees, more instability, more death.”
The solution? “I strongly believe in diplomacy and the work
of the U.N. inspectors. I believe, also, in the Iraqi people. Milosevic in
Yugoslavia was overthrown not by U.S. bombing but by student-led nonviolent
resistance to his power. At first, few thought that could bring down the
ruthless government. But it did.”
At the high school, I have turned over my class several times to
Batul -- to educate her schoolmates about the realities of state violence,
whether the government is five blocks away or the one across an ocean and a
sea. I have taken her to other schools to lecture at student assemblies. She
speaks movingly and knowledgeably.
Batul plans to become a physician. “In the refugee camp, I
saw too many people die from illnesses and diseases that could have been
prevented. I was only a child but I wondered, where are the doctors? Where is
the hospital? Where is the medicine? Someday I hope to be a doctor, and work in
the Third World, and maybe among refugees, so at least there won’t be
another child asking those questions.”
For now, other questions persist. Should American pilots bomb Iraq
cities as they did in 1991, how many Batuls will become collateral damage? How
many will be in refugee camps for years? How many will be at the mercy of two
brutal governments?
Colman McCarthy, a former Washington Post columnist,
directs the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington.
National Catholic Reporter, February 21,
2003
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