The OTHER Bombing Memorial..3 Minutes of Silence

July 21st, 2005 1:43 pm
Silent street,

broken hearts


By Liz Sly / Chicago Tribune

The dusty little Baghdad street that lost 28 of its children to a suicide bomber a week ago did not need to observe the three-minute silence in memory of the victims called by the government for noon Wednesday.

This is a street condemned to a lifetime of memories, a seeming eternity of silence, by the man who drove his explosives-packed sport-utility vehicle into a crowd of local children gathered around an American Humvee.

No children play on the street now because their parents won't allow them out. The emptiness on a side street that would normally be full of children kicking balls or riding bicycles is chilling. Every house lost at least one child.

Some lost three, residents say.

But Mohammed Hashim, 11, who survived by an accident of timing and luck, says he does not mind being kept indoors.

"All my playmates are dead,"

he explained.

"There was Ahmed and Mohammed, Yusuf, Nazreen and another Ahmed, another Mohammed," he said, ticking off names on his fingers until he ran out of fingers and his voice trailed away. "They were my classmates. I cried when I saw them."

Mohammed's twin brother, Hassan, also was killed in the blast just beyond the walls of his home, but Mohammed seems unable to mention his name.

--My God.--

The whole family, grouped in mourning at their little home just yards from the site of the blast, finds it hard to speak about the horror of that day. It was by no means the bloodiest or even the deadliest in terms of child casualties in the annals of Baghdad's unremitting violence. But it nonetheless stirred an unusual degree of condemnation, including the first call ever by the government for a nationwide moment of silence.

The 6-foot crater left by the explosion has since been turned into a small shrine, strewn with flowers and pictures of the Shiite religious leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is revered in this overwhelmingly Shiite neighborhood.

As noon approached, a dozen or so bereaved mothers draped in black and fathers clutching photos of their dead children gathered at the edge of the crater, expecting something to happen--perhaps a visit from a government official or a pause in the buzz rising from the city around them.

Like any other day

But no one came, and there was no pause. In a city inured to the daily toll of bombings and assassinations, few could find the time to stop and remember the victims.

In some neighborhoods, traffic stopped and citizens stood still in silence, according to reports on Al-Iraqiya state television, but observance of the memorial appeared to be sporadic, and in many parts of the city it was ignored.

For the bereaved families, the failure of any politicians to come to offer their respects was a major disappointment.

"The government officials are too busy stealing money!" one father shouted.

"Jaafari is a thief," another called out, referring to the prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who observed the silence along with members of Iraq's National Assembly.

Mohammed's father, Sattar Hashim, said he was not surprised.

"Since the bombing, not one official from the government has come to offer their condolences or to inspect the damage," he said. "I think it's normal now for a lot of people to die, so nobody cares."

But it doesn't feel normal for those who are directly affected, those who are left to cope with the void, the lucky ones whose split-second decisions or actions let them live when their loved ones died.

Mohammed had just walked in from a shopping trip with his mother when the blast struck right outside the house. Mohammed's cousin, 8-year-old Ahmed, had been with the soldiers but ran indoors seconds earlier, excitedly showing his grandfather the piece of candy he had secured.

"When we heard the explosion, we ran outside," Mohammed recalled matter-of-factly. "I saw lots of bodies of kids, dead kids. One of them was my brother."

Baghdad is full of communities like these: isolated in their grief and unconsoled by any hope that the conflict soon will be resolved. Anger also is rising at the government's seeming indifference, its inability to curb the violence and with the Sunni extremists who are behind it.

Shifting of blame

In the beginning, many relatives blamed the Americans for luring the children to their Humvee in the first place by offering them candies. An American soldier also was killed in the attack in the mostly Shiite neighborhood of New Baghdad that initially was reported to have claimed the lives of 24 children. The death toll has now been revised to 32, 28 of them children from this one street.

It is widely assumed in Baghdad that the Humvee was the target of the attack and that the bomber cynically plowed his SUV through the children to reach his target. He drove so fast down the short street that he knocked down at least one child on his way to the Humvee, residents said.

But since Saturday's suicide bombing in the Shiite town of Mussayib in which more than 100 people died, and the capture the same day of a suicide bomber strapped with explosives who was trying to enter the children's funeral, the people

of this neighborhood have concluded

that the children themselves were the

target.

"If you look at all the bombings, the overwhelming majority of victims are Shiites," said Karim Hashim, an uncle of Mohammed and his dead brother Hassan. "This isn't resistance.

It is genocide."

Cutting `little branches'

"It's like somebody is cutting off the little branches of the tree before it grows," added the boys' grandfather, Hashim Mozan.

Sattar said he blamed Iraq's Sunni Arab neighbors for funding the extremist groups affiliated with Al Qaeda that are believed to be responsible for most of the attacks in a bid to stir up civil war between Sunnis and Shiites.

Karim said he believed the goal of the bombers is to reduce the number of voters in the majority Shiite community so they lose power in future democratic elections to Sunni Arabs.

But the family refuses to countenance the calls for revenge that have been rising in some quarters of the Shiite community.

"We learned from our Shiite scholars that we are peaceful people and we don't take revenge," Sattar said. "Sacrifice is part of our religion, and through sacrifice we will achieve victory. Even if they kill all of the Shiite people, we will not revenge."

--Lord have mercy. What a horrible horrible situation.---