A Tragic Test Case in Iraq

Once a torrent of water coursed through this central Iraq town, which takes its name from Nahr Dujayl, the Little Tigris River that for centuries nourished its lush palm groves and orchards.

Now, only raw sewage flows through open gutters along the city’s unpaved alleyways.

Inside a mud-brick home, an old man chokes back tears as he recalls his three sons. They were killed, prosecutors say, as a result of then-President Saddam Hussein’s vengeful fury following a 1982 assassination attempt.

“One by one, my sons were taken from me,” said Ali Hossein Mussawi, a 68-year-old onetime farmer. His humble living room is filled with fading photographs of the three young men. “Saddam took away my sons, he took away half of my heart.”

Hussein’s Sunni Muslim-dominated regime unleashed a wave of retaliation within hours of the July 8, 1982, attack in the Shiite-majority city, Iraqi officials, prosecutors and witnesses say. At least 148 were rounded up and executed, an Iraqi prosecutor said. Some estimate three times that many were killed. Prosecutors allege that almost 400 men, women and even children were in custody for years.

The small river running through the town, which gave it life and prosperity, was cut off, plowed over and eventually turned into an asphalt road. The date palm groves and gardens where residents earned their livelihoods were bulldozed or left unwatered until they died too, according to prosecutors and townspeople.

Few Iraqis were brave enough to speak about events in Dujayl. Days after the botched assassination, the state-controlled newspaper Thawra sardonically hailed plans to “redevelop” and upgrade the town.

But as soon as Hussein fell in April 2003, people began speaking out. “If someone tries to kill the president, you should arrest the suspects,” said Jawad Massoud, 38, a produce wholesaler and Dujayl native who lost relatives. “Why destroy everything? Why punish everybody?”

Wednesday, Hussein and seven other defendants are scheduled to face trial for alleged crimes committed by the former government in Dujayl. It is expected to be the first of a series of criminal proceedings against Iraq’s leaders at the time.

The death toll in Dujayl pales next to the thousands of victims in Kurdistan and tens of thousands slain during a 1991 uprising in the Shiite Muslim south. Reaching a verdict on the regime’s treatment of the little farming town 40 miles north of Baghdad is considered a test run by the Iraqi Special Tribunal.

Yet in many ways, the violence and environmental destruction wreaked on Dujayl, which occurred while the U.S. and other Western powers supported Hussein during his war with Iran, foreshadowed the bloodier campaigns against the Shiites and Kurds.

For Saddam, a Sunni, it was never enough to merely punish his opponents, observers of the regime often said. “The argument was that if you show excessive brutality, it was going to prevent anyone from challenging him,” said Eric Davis, a Rutgers University scholar and author of a study of Hussein’s ideology.

“When you talk about building political power, you can’t just talk about violence in the narrow sense of the word,” Davis said. “You have to have a sense of spectacle and theater.”

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Shiites Were Suspect

Dujayl was a hotbed of political activism dating back at least to the 1960s, when Shiites joined the Iraqi Communist Party in droves. The Baath Party, which consolidated power over Iraq in 1968, outlawed the Communists and all opposition parties and began hunting down members. One early victim was Mohammad Hussein Dujayli, a 27-year-old Communist Party leader. Dujayli was arrested and executed in 1972, said his nephew, produce wholesaler Massoud.

His black-and-white portrait hangs alongside those of Shiite clerics in Massoud’s living room.

“The Communists were the first people in Iraq who said no to Saddam and to the party,” Massoud said. “They used to hold their meetings in the orchards.”

In the late 1970s, a new breed of Shiite activist emerged. Inspired by the Islamic fundamentalism of Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Najaf, Iraq-based Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq Sadr, young men aiming to create a Shiite-led Islamic state joined the Dawa Party.

Hussein, whose power rested on a pan-Arab nationalist ideology and hostility toward Shiite-dominated Iran, viewed Dawa with suspicion. After the Iran-Iraq war started in 1980, Dawa members were seen as enemy agents.

Hussein believed a Communist Party member begot a Communist and a Dawa Party member’s son or brother was likely to join Dawa. Thus, any Iraqi who had a relative in an opposition group was a question mark.

The net of suspicion widened. Sadegh Ali Mussawi, one of the three slain brothers, was picked up by security officials after someone at the 19-year-old’s night school had written “Long Live Khomeini” on a chalkboard, his father said.

“He went to school, and the police took him away,” the elder Mussawi recalled. He was killed in prison later, Mussawi said, as Hussein’s retaliation unfolded.

Mohammed Hassan Mahmoud Dujayl, the friendly, low-key technocrat now serving as Dujayl’s mayor, was arrested in 1980 and imprisoned for seven years because his relatives were close to the Dawa Party. Although Dujayl survived, his father and three brothers were executed, he said.

The Iran-Iraq war set the stage not only for the Dujayl killings but for most of Hussein’s alleged crimes during the 1980s.

With the regime worried about Iranian revolutionaries’ growing influence on Iraqi Shiites, Hussein’s forces invaded Iran on Sept. 22, 1980, attempting to seize oil-rich sections of the country. Iran fought back, and it became clear within months that Baghdad had miscalculated.

Hussein’s supporters argue and his lawyers will no doubt say at trial that he was simply fulfilling his duty to protect Iraq.

“From his perspective, he was merely rooting out elements from his society that he perceived to be treasonous,” said Lawrence Reza Ershaghi, a Chicago-based legal scholar who is researching Iraq’s Shiites.

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A Fateful Day

At the time Hussein visited Dujayl, the war was going badly and tension between the government and Shiite activists was particularly high. Khomeini, scorning Hussein’s hints at a peace deal, was calling on Iranian volunteer militiamen to march to the Iraqi religious city of Karbala and urging the oppressed Shiite majority to rebel.

Memories of the visit linger, though time has made some of the facts hazy. Although he often toured cities in grand style, no one is certain exactly why Hussein came.

Archival footage from the day, recently discovered and broadcast by Britain’s Channel 4, shows crowds running after Hussein’s convoy, cheering and throwing sweets as the president enters town. Wearing army fatigues and a black beret, Hussein stood atop a building and thanked the wildly enthusiastic residents for their war efforts.

As the motorcade took its leave, passing thickets of palms, gunfire erupted, many witnesses have recounted. Assassins had been waiting. Hussein’s security forces fired back.

“It was a real firefight,” said Mowaffak Rubaie, Iraq’s national security advisor and a well-known former Shiite activist who was imprisoned and tortured by the regime. Several members of the entourage were killed, but the president escaped, as did most, if not all, of the attackers.

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Retaliation Launched

The archival footage shows Hussein addressing the crowds again after the assassination attempt. “These few shots won’t frighten the people of Iraq and they won’t frighten Saddam Hussein. We will find and question [the suspects]. They will turn out to be three, four or five people. But the 39,000 people of Dujayl are with the revolution. We distinguish between the people of Dujayl and a small number of traitors in Dujayl.”

The next day, Baath Party and security officials started arresting anyone with a question mark next to his name, anyone linked to the Shiite shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala, anyone with connections to Dawa, local people say.

“They grabbed people on the street and took them away,” Massoud said. “They were forcing them to confess against others. If they couldn’t find someone, they would take his wife and children until he showed up.”

Iman-Sen Araji’s husband, Abbas, then a teacher of Islamic law, was among those arrested. “They didn’t knock,” the mother of five said. “They pushed through the door and surprised us. They didn’t say why he was taken. I didn’t dare ask.”

Within days, a command center had been set up, according to witnesses, at Baath Party headquarters. Helicopters flew over the orchards and fired rockets at the trees.

Jaffar Ali Mussawi, the farmer’s youngest son, was checking on the family’s orchards when the 16-year-old was stopped by police. “Someone said, ‘Hey, his brother was arrested,’ so they arrested him too,” the elder Mussawi said.

Several days later, security officers came for Mussawi’s third and last son, Hassan Ali, then 22. Mussawi never saw his three sons again.

In all, 1,500 people were rounded up, the mayor said.

Within days of the attack on the president, Araji and her five children were loaded onto a truck and taken to a prison in Baghdad, Araji said. They and nearly 60 other families from Dujayl were placed in a big room.

“They tortured us and beat us with sticks,” she said. “They said, ‘Confess! Give us information!’ ”

After 25 days, the residents were told they were going home.

They were packed up and put in vehicles. But instead of home, their destination was the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. There, they said, they were subjected to more beatings and humiliation. Guards paraded husbands before their wives and children as they were being tortured, Araji recalled.

Abbas Araji’s sister and mother were the last to see him alive sometime in late 1983 or early 1984, his wife said. He looked emaciated and near death. His execution order was discovered after the regime’s fall.

His family’s torment continued. Iman-Sen said she and her children were sent along with other families to Nograt Salman, a remote desert outpost of mud huts near the Saudi border.

Hania Mufti, an official with Human Rights Watch, said such forced relocations to camps were common in Iraq throughout the 1980s. Often there were no guards because there was no way to escape. “They were surrounded by nothing but quicksand and scorpions,” Mufti said.

“There were a lot of kids at these places. A lot of people died, and they would just throw the bodies out and the wild dogs would eat them.”

Amid the deplorable conditions, some families managed to survive intact. Wealthy clans from Dujayl and other places would smuggle in food with the aid of friendly police. Families endured Nograt Salman for as long as six years. Then the conflict with Iran ended, and Hussein tried to curry favor with the war-weary Iraqi population. Those in the camp were allowed to return to their homes.

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Punished for Decades

They found a changed town.

Most of the ancient orchards had been demolished, palm tree groves around the city had been mowed down, and land had been confiscated and given to developers. “This was like a paradise,” Mussawi said. “It was like a piece of heaven. Now that’s gone.”

Those who could do so left for Iran, the U.S. or Europe.

Not even the passing of many years could soften the regime’s scorn for Dujayl. Residents were enemies in its eyes and subject to continued prejudice. That meant limited access to jobs and opportunities.

“We were oppressed and branded as traitors,” said Massoud, who recounted that he was regularly arrested and interrogated, even though he lost his right arm defending the government during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

“If you were a Dujayli,” said Dujayl, the mayor, “forget about it. You could not get a job.”

Even now, Dujayl is one of Iraq’s poorest cities, lacking viable healthcare and a modern sewage system, the mayor said. Potable water is hard to find.

After years of suffering, the residents now look forward to some sort of justice. To Massoud, there’s but one acceptable outcome for Hussein: the death penalty. “He stole everything,” he said. “He stole my happiness.”

Araji, telling the story of her hard life, said that whatever the outcome of the trial, it wouldn’t change a thing for her.

“I faced grave difficulties raising the children alone,” she said. “Saddam took away my husband. What else is more important than my husband?”

But some say the river’s loss was the harshest blow. It stripped Dujayl of its identity and future.

“All the plantations and people were totally dependent on the Dujayl River,” the mayor lamented. “But they came with bulldozers and filled it up with sand and water. The city will never be whole again.”

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Times staff writers Richard Boudreaux in Baghdad and Suhail Ahmad in Dujayl contributed to this report.