Posted on 03/28/2003 12:08:17 PM PST by Democratic_Machiavelli
When Mazin Alkabbi awoke from an anesthesia-induced slumber on a morning in 1994, Iraqi authorities gave him grim news: He had been in a car accident and lost his ears.
Alkabbi knew better. There had been no accident. His ears had been surgically removed because he fled the military when Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1991.
Just hours before the surgery, he was arrested at his home in Basra. Alkabbi, who now lives in Arlington, remembered having his hands tied, being blindfolded and at one point even thinking he might just be questioned and released. His Iraqi identification card was stamped with the word "betrayer" in Arabic.
"I was very badly hurt," Alkabbi said in Arabic through an interpreter.
Alkabbi is among area Iraqi refugees who are watching the war in Iraq unfold through news reports in English and Arabic on satellite TV. They said they want Saddam to be toppled but worry about those who will suffer in the process.
Their fears are for Iraqi civilians and defectors, who could become Saddam's victims.
"That would be tragic," said 52-year-old Sabah Rahim, a Kurdish refugee who also lives with the scars of Saddam's ill deeds.
Twitching takes hold of Rahim's body when he talks. The thick creases on his forehead and around his eyes grow deeper when he blinks -- the side effects of a gas attack in northern Iraq in 1988. They become more pronounced as he talks about Saddam.
"He's a criminal. He just wants a reason to kill people," Rahim said in Arabic. "I think when the coalition takes over Baghdad he will use chemical and biological weapons. ... He used it against his own people."
Saddam's cruel directives have been documented by Human Rights Watch, an independent organization that investigates human rights abuses. In a 1995 overview, the organization stated that "the Iraqi government continued to punish citizens under a series of brutal decrees ... which impose punishments constituting torture."
The punishments included amputation of ears and hands, branding of foreheads and imposing the death penalty for crimes such as stealing and desertion from the military.
Alkabbi said he saw others like him in Iraqi prisons -- betrayers with no ears. He decided to drop out of the military after seeing U.S. fliers instructing the Iraqi military not to invade Kuwait. Today, Alkabbi wears plastic pieces that help camouflage the fact that there's a space where his ears used to be.
"At 3 a.m. they came to his home. By 9 a.m. they cut off his ears," said Muhsen Shabout, a former Iraqi official who lives in North Richland Hills.
Alkabbi said he can hear well, but sometimes the wind bothers his ears.
"There is no people suffering in the whole wide world like the Iraqi people under Saddam and his regime," Alkabbi said. "I pray that the coalition forces will be able to capture Saddam."
For Rahim, Saddam's terror struck in the middle of August 1988. Rahim said he was a painter in northern Iraq when a fighter jet bombed the region.
People left their houses and ran to the mountains. It was windy. The smell of apple was in the air, he said. In the morning the people who smelled apple the strongest were dead.
"We found out that Saddam bombed us with a chemical weapon," Rahim said. "My body turned black. We lost vision for 15 days."
Animals also were injured in the attack. Cows and sheep either died or became blind, Rahim said.
Those chemical attacks were also documented by Human Rights Watch.
According to a terrorism question-and-answer piece put together by the Council on Foreign Affairs, the Iraqi government used mustard gas on Kurds in a campaign called the Anfal. The worst attack was in the Kurdish village of Halabja in northern Iraq, where thousands died.
Rahim is trying to start a new life in Arlington with his five children and wife. But the new symptoms add to past pain -- headache and forgetfulness. Still, there is reason to hope.
"I'm looking forward and wish the Iraqis will be liberated. I pray for the American soldiers missing or dead."
I wish Saddam would put Hollywood on his list. I wonder how those a-holes respond to these Iraqis?
Warning: don't read this is if your stomach is already queasy.
What do they need ears for? The only thing a celebrity wants to listen to is the sound of his or her own voice.
I was thinking more about that "sweet apple smell" referred to.
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