A Letter to the British People from a daughter of Iraq

[Urata]

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I'm sending this letter to the British people and in particular to the
residents of London. For a period of hours, you have lived through
moments of desperate anxiety and horror. In those hours you lost
a member of your family or a friend, and we wish to tell you in total
honesty that we too grieve when human lives pass away. I cannot
tell you how much we hurt when we see desperation and pain on
the face of another person. For we have
lived through this situation - and continue to live through it every
day since your country and the United States formed an alliance
and laid plans to attack Iraq.

The Prime Minister of your country, Tony Blair, said that those who
carried out the explosions did so in the name of Islam. The
Secretary of State of the United States, Condaleezza Rice,
described the bombings as an act of barbarism. The United
Nations Security Council met and unanimously condemned the
event.

I would like to ask you, the free British people, to allow me to
inquire: in whose name was our country blockaded for 12 years?
In whose name were our cities bombed using internationally
prohibited weapons? In name did the British army kill Iraqis and
torture them? Was that in your name? Or in the name of religion?
Or humanity? Or freedom? Or democracy? What do you call the
killing of more than two million children? What do you call the
pollution of the soil and the water with depleted uranium and
other lethal substances?

What do you call what happened in the prisons in Iraq - in Abu
Ghraib, Camp Bucca and the many other prison camps? What do
you call the torture of men, women, and children? What do you call
tying bombs to the bodies of prisoners and blowing them apart?
What do you call the refinement of methods of torture for use on
Iraqi prisoners - such as pulling off limbs, gouging out eyes,
putting out cigarettes on their skin, and using cigarette "barbaric"
adequately describe the behavior of your troops in Iraq?

May we ask why the Security Council did not condemn the
massacre in al-Amiriyah and what happened in al-Fallujah,
Tal'afar, Sadr City, and an-Najaf? Why does the world watch as our
people are killed and tortured and not condemn the crimes being
committed against us? Are you human beings and we something
less? Do you think that only you can feel pain >can't?

In fact it is we who are most aware of how intense is the pain of
the mother who has lost her child, or the father who has lost his
family. We know very well how painful it is to lose those you love.

You don't know our martyrs, but we know them. You don't
remember them, but we remember them. You don't cry over them,
but we cry over them.

Have you heard the name of the little girl Hannan Salih Matrud? Or
of the boy Ahmad Jabir Karim? Or Sa'id Shabram?

Yes, our dead have names too. They have faces and stories and
memories. There was a time when they were among us, laughing
and playing. They had dreams, just as you have. They had a
tomorrow awaiting them. But today they sleep among us with no
tomorrow on which to wake.

We don't hate the British people or the peoples of the world. This
war was imposed upon us, but we are now fighting it in defense of
our selves.

Because we want to live in our homeland - the free land of Iraq -
and to live as we want to live, not as your government or the
American government wish.

Let the families of those killed know that responsibility for the
Thursday morning London bombings lies with Tony Blair and his
policies. Stop your war against our people! Stop the daily killing
that your troops commit!

End your occupation of our homeland!

*Iman al-Saadun, Friday, 8 July 2005*