The personal stories and testimonies that follow symbolise the current debacle in Iraq, as another year of suffering is coming to an end. Black mourning signs are everywhere, commemorating those killed by booby-trapped cars, US bullets, assassins, and marauders. Dozens of Iraqis die everyday, but the only count the world keeps is that of US fatalities. Almost two years have passed since American troops came to Iraq and nothing is showing any improvement. The only thing on the way up is the crime rate. Iraqis still hope against hope for a night without fear, without the thud of explosions and the buzz of US planes; and for a morning without the transitional government threatening to bomb one more town, as if collective punishment is the only recourse left to it. Aside from the political situation, resistance attacks, abduction, murder, and financial irregularities in various ministries, the humanitarian and psychological damage caused by the US presence is enormous. 'So close to death' I was doing maintenance work on one of the mobile networks near the Syrian border in Iraq with my colleagues, when cars suddenly drove into the rocky valley, and around 13 gunmen opened fire on us. I panicked. I felt it was the end, and I started to pray. The gunmen forced us to kneel on the ground, searched us, and asked who the Egyptians were. A few minutes later, the kidnappers loaded nine of us -- four Egyptians and five Iraqis -- into their cars, and we drove off. We headed east towards Ramadi, guns pointed at our guts. We stopped in front of a truckload of gunmen, who started arguing with the kidnappers. The dispute was about who owned that territory and who, accordingly, had the right to take us [hostage]. The dispute ended with us being driven west towards Syria. The captors took us to seven different places during the six days we spent in captivity. They blindfolded us so that we could not figure out where we were. But generally we were kept in the back rooms of homes in villages. We would break into hysterical cries, especially when they removed our blindfolds and we saw that black-clad armed men had joined the plain-clothes group. The only thing that made us feel better was that the group always assured us that we were only there for interrogations, and would be released after we had answered a few questions. They said they were Muslims and would not kill without a good reason. The kidnappers wanted to know whether our employer had any Israeli ties, or was serving the US occupying forces in any way. The nine of us worked for Iraqna, an Iraqi- subsidiary of Egypt-based Orascom Telecom Holding, one of three companies licensed to build and operate an Iraqi mobile phone network. I have been working for Orascom for 14 years. I quickly confirmed that the company was 100 per cent Egyptian, and was actually helping the Iraqi people rebuild their war-torn country. The group's sheikh, or leader, led the interrogations. We could not see his face, but he looked so young. He was small, and simply dressed. The group then handed us to another group whose sheikh was extremely friendly. He said he had discovered Iraqna was Egyptian, and promised we would soon be released -- after negotiations with the company. He said we could remain in Iraq and continue working, because they didn't want us to lose our livelihood. They even said they would protect us if we stayed. We were generally well-treated by our abductors. The kidnappers provided us with food, cigarettes and clothes. They talked and joked with us, allowed my Muslim companions to pray, and gave us back all our belongings upon our release. The captors were especially nice to one of my sick colleagues: they provided him with treatment and gave him money on his release. We were not subject to any kind of humiliation or torture. I suspect the kidnappers were a mixture of gangs and resistance fighters. Resistance groups usually warn people three times before they start taking action. These resistance fighters were grateful for our company's services. Some of them even became our friends. I would never ever go back to work in Iraq, even if that meant remaining unemployed. It was so difficult to be so close to death. Amir Dawoud, an Egyptian telecoms engineer taken hostage in Iraq earlier this year, spoke to Gihane Shahine . 'I would be mad too' We were discharging our weapons, 50 cals and M-16's into the civilian vehicles... expecting secondary explosions, ammunition to be cooking off or actually have the occupants in the vehicle fire back at us. However, none of this ever happened. When we would go to search the vehicles, we would find no weapons, and nothing to link these individuals with terrorists' acts. This happened continuously through the fall of Baghdad. I would say my platoon alone killed 30-plus innocent civilians. [...] We ultimately started looking at everybody in Iraq as a potential suicide bomber or terrorist, from women to children to old men. We didn't know who the enemy was... Whenever you fire a machine gun, especially a 50 calibre and any type of lightweight machine gun, you don't know where the bullets are going to go. So bullets could indiscriminately hit a child... Some of these villages that we went into were very shady constructions. Our weapons could easily punch through. [In one case this killed a child in his home]... The response that I got from my command was, well, better them than us, he's just a casualty of war. Sorry. After we left the city of Anu Mannia, it just became utter chaos. It sickened me, so that I had actually brought it up to my lieutenant, I told him... 'you know, we're basically committing genocide over here, mass extermination of thousands of Iraqis, and with the depleted uranium that we're leaving around on the battlefield, we're setting up genocide for future generations within Iraq. He didn't like that. He immediately went to my commanding officer, Captain Schmitt, and proceeded to tell him about how I felt about Iraq. Word spread pretty quickly and I knew that my Marine Corps career was over. Marines are trained from day one that you go in -- when you go in to boot camp, you learn what the Geneva Convention is... However, Iraq violated every rule of engagement that I have ever been taught -- every rule of the Geneva Convention. If you have young marines coming up to you and asking you, staff sergeant, what's going on? You know, we have got a problem. The bullets that we put into the civilians were paid for by the US tax dollar. I believe that the US taxpayers have a right to know what's going on over there. The president of the United States [is responsible for this]. He's the one that authorised it. He's the one that said there were weapons of mass destruction. He's the one that gave the case to us for going to war. We went to war backing him... It's hard to tell a man in his 20s that just watched his brother die by the hands of Americans... 'Hey, we're sorry. He's just a casualty of war.' Now, this young man has taken revenge or is acting in revenge against the United States in Falluja, in Karbala... We were supposed to go in there and set up a democracy. All we did was cause chaos and have a genocidal mindset... They have every right to be mad. I know if somebody killed my brother, indiscriminately, and laughed about it and said, well, sorry, wrong place, wrong time, I would be mad, too. Former Marine Staff Segt. Jimmy Massey (Ret.), who was honourably discharged after serving 12 years, from an interview with Democracy Now, May 2004. 'Custom-made torture' Before I was arrested in August 2003, I was one of the leading lawyers in my town. People knew me: I was the only woman who would represent defendants in criminal cases! I knew that defending suspected criminals could make me enemies. But I didn't know that someone would tell the Americans I was hosting meetings for Baathists in my house. It was a ludicrous charge for anyone who knew me! For I was once imprisoned by the former regime myself. One afternoon, the phone rang at my home. It was a foreign translator, asking me to come urgently to the governorate's administrative offices. I had invited some people over for lunch, but I thought I could still make it back in time, so I didn't cancel the invitation. When I arrived at the gate to the governorate's offices, the translator was waiting for me. He accompanied me to an Iraqi airbase, now used by the US, where I was immediately detained without charges. I was held in a bathroom that served as a detention cell. I was kept there for 22 days without knowing why I was being held and without my family being notified of my fate. I was sure someone had set me up, but I didn't know exactly what that person might have said. During my detention, I was given simple food and was not allowed to leave the bathroom, although the smell was killing me. Finally I went on hunger strike and my health deteriorated. Only then did the Americans inform me of the charge: I was accused of hosting Baathists in my house and helping them reorganise. I was transferred to another airport being used as a US base in Tikrit. There, I was subjected to psychological torture that was worse than anything physical. I was placed in a tent with other women detainees, most of whom didn't know why they had been arrested. Each time they asked, they received only one word in answer: security. Most of the detainees were Baathists or from Baathist families. We had to use a bathroom that didn't have a proper door. We protested to no avail. In this detention facility, the Americans had invented a new method of torture, custom-made for women held on security charges. We were forced to carry out the pots that held the human excrement from the toilets. An 11-year-old inmate would help me in this task. We had to take these pots to a certain area where we would separate out the solid matter, which we would then carry to yet another area. There, we had to mix the excrement with a chemical product and stir it until it dissolved and could be disposed of. I worked at this task for two months, without being allowed to take a bath or change my clothes, not even my underwear. Each time I asked to be interrogated, they simply increased the amount of excrement I had to carry. Then I was transferred to Abu Ghraib. The second floor was reserved for women detainees. From there we had a view of the men's wards on the ground floor. I saw naked men being tortured, begging for mercy. The screams of the men under torture tormented the women detainees, and they lived in constant fear of being raped. I wasn't raped. But I remember very well the brutal manner in which the sisters of deposed Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan were treated, and how they were insulted to make them reveal their brother's hiding place. I can remember how one of them was forced to repeat obscene words and phrases, then beaten. The women insisted that they didn't know where Ramadan was hiding, but their torture and detention continued all the same -- even after Ramadan had been arrested. I also remember the youngsters who were detained in Abu Ghraib for theft and other misdemeanours. They too were tortured. A few months later I was released. I found that while I had been imprisoned my daughter had been forced to marry against her will. The members of a criminal gang had persuaded my older son to sell our house in Baghdad for next to nothing, and were bullying him to work for them. I did what I could to save him. Now, I move constantly from one place to another with my younger son, and I live in fear that we will be hunted down. Amal Fattah, who used to be a prominent lawyer in Diayli, a city situated 70km northeast of Baghdad, spoke to Nermeen Al-Mufti 'A prayer in every corner' After Falluja was "liberated" in November 2004, the city was left in ruins. I took refuge in a school in Al-Saqallawiya, to the southeast of the town. I took my three children with me. I still don't know what has happened to my husband. The US troops issued an order banning men under 45 from leaving, and he was trapped in the city. The inhabitants of Falluja were opposed to the US military presence. They staged a peaceful demonstration in late April 2003. A bullet was fired, no one knows from where. The Americans fired back, on the pretext of self-defence, killing and wounding dozens. During the funeral procession the next day, bullets were fired again, something Iraqis always do at weddings and funerals. Once again, the Americans opened fire, killing or wounding a dozen more people. Tension set in, and now the city has been destroyed. My city is a very conservative one. It used to be called the city of minarets. Falluja has a history of welcoming guests and resisting occupiers. Dozens of officers from the disbanded Iraqi army lived there. Maybe that is why so many resistance members -- Arab fighters, Islamist militants -- all chose Falluja as a staging point. By doing so, they set in motion a process that has led to the city's destruction. I haven't received my salary in months. It pains me to have to live on aid that is barely sufficient to feed my children. The nights are very cold and we lack electricity, fuel, and blankets. The government doesn't care for us. We have all been punished. I don't know of any law that authorises collective punishment, except the one that the deposed regime had passed -- a law that sanctioned the collective punishment of any area in which bullets were fired against a government or party official. Now, the US liberators and the transitional government, who claim to have saved us from Saddam, are competing with the old regime in their brutality and violation of law and human rights. We had many dreams for our children. But now they can no longer go to school. I don't know if I will ever be able to go back home . Though conditions were tough there, my home was warm and cosy. I had stored a dream and a prayer in every corner of the house. I married in the conventional way, but I loved my husband, for his kindness and his courage, and because he worried about my children and me. I hope that I will find him safe. Even if he is wounded, I still hope to see him alive. Aisha Mohamed, 33, who used to work as a teacher in Falluja, spoke to Nermeen Al-Mufti
