The Children of Fallujah - Sayef's story

Special Report day one: The phosphorus shells that
devastated this city were fired in 2004. But are the
victims of America's dirty war still being born?

ROBERT FISK FALLUJAH
WEDNESDAY 25 APRIL 2012
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-the-children-of-fallujah--sayefs-story-7675977.html

For little Sayef, there will be no Arab Spring. He lies,
just 14 months old, on a small red blanket cushioned by a
cheap mattress on the floor, occasionally crying, his head
twice the size it should be, blind and paralysed.
Sayeffedin Abdulaziz Mohamed - his full name - has a kind
face in his outsized head and they say he smiles when
other children visit and when Iraqi families and
neighbours come into the room.

But he will never know the history of the world around
him, never enjoy the freedoms of a new Middle East. He can
move only his hands and take only bottled milk because he
cannot swallow. He is already almost too heavy for his
father to carry. He lives in a prison whose doors will
remain forever closed.

It's as difficult to write this kind of report as it is to
understand the courage of his family. Many of the Fallujah
families whose children have been born with what doctors
call "congenital birth anomalies" prefer to keep their
doors closed to strangers, regarding their children as a
mark of personal shame rather than possible proof that
something terrible took place here after the two great
American battles against insurgents in the city in 2004,
and another conflict in 2007.

After at first denying the use of phosphorous shells
during the second battle of Fallujah, US forces later
admitted that they had fired the munitions against
buildings in the city. Independent reports have spoken of
a birth-defect rate in Fallujah far higher than other
areas of Iraq, let alone other Arab countries. No one, of
course, can produce cast-iron evidence that American
munitions have caused the tragedy of Fallujah's children.

Sayef lives - the word is used advisedly, perhaps - in the
al-Shahada district of Fallujah, in one of the more
dangerous streets in the city. The cops - like the
citizens of Fallujah, they are all Sunni Muslims - stand
with their automatic weapons at the door of Sayef's home
when we visit, but two of these armed, blue-unformed men
come inside with us and are visibly moved by the helpless
baby on the floor, shaking their heads in disbelief and
with a hopelessness which his father, Mohamed, refuses to
betray.

"I think all this is because of the use by the Americans
of phosphorous in the two big battles," he says. "I have
heard of so many cases of congenital birth defects in
children. There has to be a reason. When my child first
went to the hospital, I saw families there with exactly
the same problems."

Studies since the 2004 Fallujah battles have recorded
profound increases in infant mortality and cancer in
Fallujah; the latest report, whose authors include a
doctor at Fallujah General Hospital, says that congenital
malformations account for 15 per cent of all births in
Fallujah.

"My son cannot support himself," Mohamed says, fondling
his son's enlarged head. "He can move only his hands. We
have to bottle-feed him. He can't swallow. Sometimes he
can't take even the milk, so we have to take him to
hospital to be given fluids. He was blind when he was
born. In addition, my poor little man's kidney has shut
down. He got paralysed. His legs don't move. His blindness
is due to hydrocephalus."

Mohamed holds Sayef's useless legs and moves them gently
up and down. "After he was born, I got Sayef to Baghdad
and I had the most important neurosurgeons check him. They
said they could do nothing. He had a hole in his back that
was closed and then a hole in his head. The first
operation did not succeed. He had meningitis."

Both Mohamed and his wife are in their mid-thirties.
Unlike many tribal families in the area, neither are
related and their two daughters, born before the battles
of Fallujah, are in perfect health. Sayef was born on 27
January, 2011. "My two daughters like their brother very
much," Mohamed adds, "and even the doctors like him. They
all take part in the care of the child. Dr Abdul-Wahab
Saleh has done some amazing work on him - Sayef would not
be alive without him."

Mohamed works for an irrigation mechanics company but
admits that, with a salary of only $100 a month, he
receives financial help from relatives. He was outside
Fallujah during the conflict but returned two months after
the second battle only to find his house mined; he
received funding to rebuild his home in 2006. He watches
Sayef for a long time during our conversation and then
lifts him in his arms.

"Every time I watch my son, I'm dying inside," he says,
tears running down his face. "I think about his destiny.
He is getting heavier all the time. It's more difficult to
carry him." So I ask whom he blames for Sayef's little
calvary. I expect a tirade of abuse against the Americans,
the Iraqi government, the Health Ministry. The people of
Fallujah have long been portrayed as "pro-terrorist" and
"anti-Western" in the world's press, ever since the murder
and cremation of the four American mercenaries in the city
in 2004 - the event which started the battles for Fallujah
in which up to 2,000 Iraqis, civilians and insurgents,
died, along with almost 100 US troops.

But Mohamed is silent for a few moments. He is not the
only father to show his deformed child to us. "I am only
asking for help from God," he says. "I don't expect help
from any other human being." Which proves, I guess, that
Fallujah - far from being a city of terror - includes some
very brave men.

Fallujah: A history

The first battle of Fallujah, in April 2004, was a
month-long siege, during which US forces failed to take
the city, said to be an insurgent stronghold. The second
battle, in November, flattened the city. Controversy raged
over claims US troops had deployed white phosphorus
shells. A 2010 study said increases in infant mortality,
cancer and leukaemia in Fallujah exceeded those reported
by survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.

Tomorrow: The doctors fighting to improve the lives of
Fallujah's suffering children

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