Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 10:47:23 -0600
From: “Mashood Yunus” [email protected]
Subject: Even donkeys are “terrorists”…
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=408
408§ion=news
Iraqi donkeys suffer under U.S. suspicion
Mon 24 November, 2003 14:56
By Michael Georgy
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Since guerrillas used donkeys to outwit the
high-tech
defences of the U.S. military in Iraq, the life of the beast of burden
has
never been so miserable.
Attackers used donkey carts to launch Katyusha rockets at the Oil
Ministry
and two fortified Baghdad hotels on Friday. Two other donkey carts were
stopped – one carrying more rockets, the other a donkey-bomb wired up
with
explosives.
Every donkey in Baghdad is suddenly under suspicion as U.S. President
George
W. Bush wages a global war on terror.
In a crackdown on an animal that already suffers multiple daily
whippings,
U.S. soldiers with automatic rifles regularly stop and search donkey
carts
for weapons.
Donkey owners say petrol stations have been refusing to sell them
kerosene
for resale since the rocket attacks. The animals salivate and wheeze
with
exhaustion as they pull their owners and heavy loads across the
potholed
streets of the Iraqi capital in a desperate search for kerosene.
“I have five daughters to feed. I used to make 7,000 dinars a day (2.2
pounds). Now I earn only 2,000 since the Americans started pressuring
us
after the rocket attacks,” said Jabar Mahdi.
“We ask the petrol station managers for kerosene and they refuse. What
did
we do to get treated like this?”
NO RESPECT
Even before the rocket attacks, donkey cart drivers were some of the
least
respected people in Iraq, living on the fringes of society in teeming
slums.
Some fear Iraqis will now look down on them even more as they navigate
their
battered, bloodstained donkeys through chaotic traffic.
“When they see us ride by they call us terrorists. They accuse us of
being
Saddam’s guerrillas and causing all of the security problems in Iraq,”
said
Hikmat Sabeeh, 30.
“We had nothing to do with the rocket attacks.”
The attacks could not have come at a worse time for donkey cart owners,
who
can barely afford to buy newspapers to read about the rockets and bombs
that
have shaken Baghdad.
U.S. troops are pounding the country in major operations designed to
root
out guerrillas who have killed 185 of their comrades since Washington
declared major combat over on May 1.
They are not taking any chances so donkey owners fear getting caught up
in a
security crisis in postwar Iraq.
Ali Kathim woke up two days after the rocket attacks to find his donkey
was
missing.
“My friends said they saw the Americans take my donkey away,” he said.
“I
have not been able to work for four days. I just sit around. I don’t
know if
I will get the donkey back.”
Donkeys are not alone. Horses also face new checks.
“The Americans always check our horse carriages. Every time we ride
around
they stop us and check our wooden boxes for weapons,” said Ali Hassan,
in
the muddy streets of the Sadr City slum, as horse owners bought
kerosene
among piles of rotten garbage swarming with flies.