War victims stake claim for compensation

Ammar Abd al-Husayn is not sure what to think when he sees British Coalition forces patrolling the streets near his home. He is certainly glad that they have driven Saddam Husayn from power and, yes, he is reassured to know that his house is safe from looters when the troops are around; but the bomb which killed his father and younger brother was a British one. Fourteen-year-old Murtada Tahir, on the other hand, says he still likes the British. He was, after all, born in Glasgow, and reckons he can live with his injuries which he sustained when he was hit by a piece of shrapnel as he rushed to a window to catch a glimpse of the Coalition aircraft. Whereas people in Basra generally say that almost all civilian casualties could have been avoided but for Saddam's policy of deploying his troops in the heart of residential areas, they nevertheless insist that an apology and a little compensation from the British would go a long way towards helping them forgive. Hundreds of civilians are believed to have died during the battle for Basra - many more were injured; and it has fallen to a group of young medical students to find out exactly how many victims there were, and to lobby the Coalition for compensation on their behalf. "If the British came here to help the people of Iraq - and we believe that they did - isn't it only fair that they should compensate and help the innocent people that they have hurt or killed, even it was by accident?" 23-year-old Muhammad Qasim asked IRIN. "Any civilian casualties are unfortunate and regrettable," Flight Lt Peter Darling, a British military spokesman in Basra, told IRIN. "As far as I know there are no moves afoot to compensate." Muhammad and Ali Husayn are sitting in the lobby of a Basra hotel nursing small cups of dark Iraqi coffee before setting out for another day of what they call surveying. Like the other 29 members of their group, Muhammad and Ali have been allocated an area of the city to comb to participate in the compilation of a comprehensive database of the victims of coalition bombing. The two are working for the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), under the umbrella of an organisation founded by an American activist, Marla Ruzicka, in Afghanistan in 2002 to help the civilian victims of bombing there. CIVIC began operating in Iraq on 16 April and hopes to complete the database it is working on by the end of this month. "We collect data on the victims of the bombing, as well as victims of the Saddam regime, and then, once our database is complete, we will approach international organisations who are in a position to help them," said Ali. CIVIC's long-term goal is to help the hundreds of Iraqi army deserters who each had the tip of one ear cut off as punishment, but in the short term their priority lies with the victims of Iraq's most recent war. According to figures provided by the Iraqi health ministry, 700 were killed and more than 1,200 injured in Basra alone, but CIVIC researchers say the figure could be even higher. The Coalition says avoiding civilian casualties is paramount in operations like Iraq. "There is an enormous effort and a long involved process to look at the risk of collateral damage in bombing operations we undertake," Darling said. A short drive around Basra reveals dozens of civilian houses with damage ranging from shrapnel pockmarks to total destruction. In addition, beside the shattered compound of a doctor's house are the twisted remains of Iraqi militia trucks. "Chemical Ali was using a nearby house as a communications centre, which the British would have picked up on their scanners," said Ammar Abd al-Husayn, in an attempt to understand why British bombs rained down on his quiet residential street on the third day of the war. [Chemical Ali was the nickname of Ali Hasan al-Majid, believed to have been responsible for the gassing of hundreds of Kurds in Halabja in 1988. In April he was southern military regional commander reportedly killed during the battle for Basra.] But Darling pointed out that target selection was a carefully thought out process: "On average we strike only one out of about every thousand targets we consider," he said. "At the same time, there was a large group of cars parked outside my neighbour's house for a funeral, and maybe the British thought that it was a Ba'th Party meeting. But whatever the reasons for the bombing, my father and brother are now dead - and they were innocent of all crimes," said Ammar.