I wonder what excuse they used when they took her. It’s most likely she’s one of the thousands of people they round up under the general headline of ‘terrorist suspect’. She might have been one of those subtitles you read on CNN or BBC or Arabiya, "13 insurgents captured by Iraqi security forces." The men who raped her are those same security forces Bush and Condi are so proud of- you know- the ones the Americans trained. It’s a chapter right out of the book that documents American occupation in Iraq: the chapter that will tell the story of 14-year-old Abeer who was raped, killed and burned with her little sister and parents.
They abducted her from her house in an area in southern Baghdad called Hai Al Amil. No- it wasn’t a gang. It was Iraqi peace keeping or security forces- the ones trained by Americans? You know them. She was brutally gang-raped and is now telling the story.
The narrator is the young Iraqi girl in Baghdad whose eloquent English animates her blog "Baghdad Burning."
I wish this blog were required reading for every US citizen. Because while numbers and postulations are mechanically tossed back and forth for the pros/cons of "staying the course" in Iraq, this blogger brings raw firsthand Baghdad street observations to the touted success stories about US-trained Iraqi forces.
They’re training them all right. Training them to behave as they did in Abu Ghraib, or Guantanamo.
As for Sabrine, of course Prime Minister Nouri al-Makiki denied it all... accused Sunni politicians of manufacturing it all to undermine a "security operation," and cooked up an "official" government statement that "medical examinations" disproved any sexual attack whatsoever... after which the prime minister ordered that the accused officers should be rewarded (the blogger’s link to Yahoo news concerning this outrage no longer bears the story).
The blogger presents the woman’s side:
No Iraqi woman under the circumstances- under any circumstances- would publicly, falsely claim she was raped. There are just too many risks. There is the risk of being shunned socially. There is the risk of beginning an endless chain of retaliations and revenge killings between tribes. There is the shame of coming out publicly and talking about a subject so taboo, she and her husband are not only risking their reputations by telling this story, they are risking their lives.
No one would lie about something like this simply to undermine the Baghdad security operation. That can be done simply by calculating the dozens of dead this last week. Or by writing about the mass detentions of innocents, or how people are once again burying their valuables so that Iraqi and American troops don't steal them.
According to the blogger, less than 14 hours elapsed between Sabrine’s televised claims and Maliki’s exoneration of the accused.
Which, she maintains, is a way of intimidating other prisoners (particularly women) from voicing similar accounts about American forces and their Iraqi trainees.
The blog is a heart-rending read. Inserting photos of from the televised testimony of the veiled woman, she says
"She might just be the bravest Iraqi woman ever. Everyone knows American forces and Iraqi security forces are raping women (and men), but this is possibly the first woman who publicly comes out and tells about it using her actual name. Hearing her tell her story physically makes my heart ache. Some people will call her a liar. Others (including pro-war Iraqis) will call her a prostitute- shame on you in advance.
A Kalishnikov in her face, struck with a pipe, the horrors of the multiple rapes she endured... America, rub this blog in your face.
Raging on the blogger fears that "foreigners will never be able to relate." One of those "she’s [not] one of us" deals, "not a girl in jeans and a t-shirt so there will only be a vague sort of sympathy."
You who urge war in Iraq, her testimony is that "we never had to tolerate this before." As to all the press about Saddam Hussein, 2003 was a honeymoon compared to present times, for before the US came "Iraqis were safe in the streets. That time is long gone."
She laments that Sabrine is one of unknown numbers of Iraqi women who have been raped in their homes and in US prisons. To her, Sabrine resembles a neighbor. To other Iraqis, they would see in her face their sister, mother, aunt, cousin... but to the war freaks in the US, just a stranger.
A final word to those who think they are making something wonderful happen in Iraq with their "democracy..."
Let me clear it up for any moron with lingering doubts: It’s worse. It’s over. You lost. You lost the day your tanks rolled into Baghdad to the cheers of your imported, American-trained monkeys. You lost every single family whose home your soldiers violated. You lost every sane, red-blooded Iraqi when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out and verified your atrocities behind prison walls as well as the ones we see in our streets. You lost when you brought murderers, looters, gangsters and militia heads to power and hailed them as Iraq’s first democratic government. You lost when a gruesome execution was dubbed your biggest accomplishment. You lost the respect and reputation you once had. You lost more than 3000 troops. That is what you lost America. I hope the oil, at least, made it worthwhile.
May I recommend this blog to the world.