City of Martyrs

ABC Australia

May 1991

 

 

00:07:05- 00:10:17

(Voiceover)

 

 We sat stunned, as we drove into Karbala.

 

00:21:21- 00:26:20

(Voiceover)

In Biblical style, Saddam’s troops had raised the town centre to the ground.

 

What bloody battle, unseen by the western media, had brought such devastation here, only 100km south of Baghdad.

 

 

00:48:05- 00:57:09

(Voiceover)

 

Of those who urged on by the West, rose up against the dictator, there was no sign. How many had died?

 

00:59:16- 01:27:23

(Man Speaking)

 

Possibly, around 100.000 people had been killed, during the uprising and in the aftermath. There was absolutely no instrument or infrastructure to control the population there. So, they went on mass-control measures, detaining people on mass, terrorising them by mass killings and using brutal, sheer force to keep them in control. And it has worked.

 

01:30:17- 01:49:22

(Voiceover)

 

Saddam had promised the mother of all battles. But in the end he fought it against his own people.

 

That one of its bloodiest chapters was here, in Karbala has tremendous significance. Even the allies avoided bombing this place, for fear of damaging the shrines here.

 

01:50:22- 02:07:22

(Voiceover)

 

For Karbala is the holiest city for the Shia people, who make up more than 80% of Iraq’s population. Picking our way through the rubble, with our government supplied minder; it’s not too surprising that we could find no one, who had a good word for the rebels. 

 

 

 

00:02:07:16- 02:18:17

(Man Speaking- Arabic)

 

We don't know a thing about them; they are alien, most of them Indians, Pakistanis and Iranians. They look like foreigners. Their aim is anti-Iraq, to ruin Iraq.

 

02:19:03- 02:45:11

(Man Speaking- Arabic)

 

Those rebels who came don’t seem to have and follow revolutionary thinking and slogans. Those who kill and rape the people are not revolutionaries.

The situation stabilised when the Ba’athists controlled this town. We were frightened that things would become even more disastrous and we thank God that the Ba’athists are now in control.

 

02:46:08- 03:05:04

(Voiceover)

 

There is of course an official explanation for the uprising and this was the main theme we heard repeated again and again; that the rebels were Iranians, foreign saboteurs, who tried to destroy the country. As usual, in Iraq the truth is desperately hard to come by.

 

 

03:06:07- 03:38:05

(Man Speaking)

You must understand that those who stayed alive, and you saw in the streets of Karbala, have witnessed with their own eyes that the holy shrines have been attacked and nothing happened. That tanks rolled into this holly city, killing people and crushing them, and nothing happened. They’ve witnessed that the government troops killed children, killed women and nothing happened, and hence, they are so terrified they’ll say anything to stay alive.

 

 

03:39:00- 04:10:23

(Voiceover)

 

At the centre of the battleground and now terribly scarred, is the most sacred of those shrines, that of the Imam Al-Husayn, grandson of the prophet Muhammad.

 

Here was the headquarters of the rebels, their rallying point and the place of their last of the snare against the republican guard.  Large numbers of people died here, as if repeating the history of the Imam Husayn, who himself fought a doomed battle against a powerful tyrant.

 

04:11:10- 04:42:15

(Man Speaking)

 

It cost him his life, and he wanted to demonstrate that one must give his blood, in order to stand against tyrants. And since that time that shrine has become a symbol of all movements that resisted tyrants in that region. And I think Saddam Hussein, by attacking that, he attacked the strongest or the most sacred point in the Shia character, in an attempt to crush and frighten and defeat the Shias of Iraq. 

 

 

04:47:18- 05:08:11

(Voiceover)

 

Signs of a terrible fight are everywhere. Huge doors in each section of the shrine have been blasted off their hinges, to get at those sheltering behind them. The most exquisite works of enamel and tiles are riddled with bullet holes.

 

 

05:20:23- 05:41:09

(Voiceover)

 

Miraculously, the great chandeliers were mostly intact. But every square inch of the marble walls, seemed to have been hit in the fire-fight, and in some places the bullets were still there, imbedded deeply in the stone.

 

 

05:41:20- 06:08:00

(Man Speaking)

 

We know that, during the uprising the shrine had become the…, if you like to call it, ‘the central command’ for coordination of the rebellion, in that city in particular. And, obviously as the attack started, it was the last ditch, very much, in the battling ground and people fought to the last minute, up until they were killed.

 

06:09:03- 06:21:33

(Man Speaking)

 

The shrine itself, because people believe it’s a safe, Godly given safe haven, they all took refuge in the shrine. This is something very deep in the believes and psychology of the Shias.

 

 

 

 

06:36:15- 07:12:05

(Voiceover)

 

And this was the scene inside, in the terrifying days before the government counterattack.  Shias chanting ‘Save us, save us Iran.’

It’s footage never shown before publicly, shot on home video and smuggled out, before the last days of the battle of Karbala. Watching these images for the first time, we thought we’d stumbled across the ghosts of a stillborn revolution. Men, women, children and tiny babies, all crammed inside the shrine of the martyr, who died fighting a tyrant.

 

07:13:21- 07:17:12

(Voiceover)

 

It’s believed that most of these people too, are now dead. 

 

07:21:21; 08:16:05

(Voiceover)

 

As we filmed here, a solitary man was allowed, passed the centuries, to pray at the shrine.

 

The Republican Guard are still in charge here and had allowed no one else inside.  We never found out why he warranted the special privilege of being the only man allowed to make his prayers here. Though, it seems to me now that he was probably sent to us as an officially sanctioned eyewitness of the uprising.

 

Whatever his connections, Abid Ali Salman, a Shia himself, carried the papers of a retired government bureaucrat. He said, he opposed the uprising and believed the army was right to crush it.

 

A veteran of the Iran-Iraq war Salman voiced the common Iraqi fear of Iranians, part of the key to the failure of the Shia uprising.

 

08:17:21- 09:09:19

(Abid Ali Salman)

 

The saboteurs came on the fifth of March. Their main aim was destruction. They demolished official buildings, looted food stores, raped and ravished women and either killed or forced others to join them. This was not a revolution, we know most of them. We have been generous to them; they were the Iranian residents, persons who lived here and shared our water, ate from our land, but they did not remain loyal to our country.

 

09:10:10- 09:36:21

(Man Speaking)

 

The war had left the apparatus, the security apparatus, in total disarray, and hence the local population found the opportunity and took it. It happened spontaneously, it was under nobody’s control. Local, what you can call them gangs, or rebels emerged and controlled the area, but obviously they had a lot of support from the population, otherwise they would have not been able to take charge of the city for such a long time.

 

 

09:42:19- 09:48:06

(Voiceover)

 

The rebels were ecstatic at their early victories, but desperate street battles still continued.

 

 

 09:52:08- 09:53:22

 

God is great.

 

09:55:00- 10:40:18

 

God is great.

                       

Oh Revolutionaries pursue them wherever they may be. Oh sons oh Holy Kaballa, oh honest and noble people, pursue the fleeing enemy. Fighters, capture those tyrants everywhere. Capture them and bring them to the Al-Abbas mosque to be punished, the punishment of death.  The punishment is death in the Holy Quarter of Al-Abbas. 

 

10:41:23- 11:06:23

 

While filming in the shrine, we were shown the room, the rebels made into a makeshift hospital. It had been left as it was, when the republican guards stormed in.  No one would tell us the fate of the injured or those who attended them.

This is that same room at the height of the rebellion. Things actually got worse towards the end.

 

11:07:10- 11:37:15

(Woman speaking- Arabic)

 

No one knows what is happening to us. They don’t know our suffering. They do not hear us. The shrine of Al-Abbas has been hit, the shrine of Al-Hussain hit.  Everything has been hit. They hit people, families, mosques. They are using all kinds of arms. They used chemicals. They want to exterminate us. We cannot cope. They bring corpses form everywhere. Martyrs… Many wounded…  A lot ...

We cannot cope with either.

 

 

 

 

11:39:06- 11:56:14

(Voiceover)

 

In this atmosphere of terror, Saddam thrives, and wherever he goes these days, on his whistle-stop propaganda tours. Just as here in Babylon, city notables concurring to give tributes and assurances that only degenerates had opposed him in the recent uprising. 

 

 

 

11:56:18- 12:17:23

 

About what has happened in Babylon, we would like you not to be annoyed with us and not compare these respectable citizens attending here with the ignorant and degraded rebels, who if God wills it, will be defeated forever.

 

12:19:17- 12:45:05

(Saddam Hussein)

 

I know, as you know, that the main trouble came from Iran, slipped into Iraq and, it should be said, other scoundrels backed them. In every society you find such evil-minded people.

 

12:45:17- 13:05:05

(Man Speaking)

 

He has nothing to offer the population today, other than more killings and more brutality. Iraq will witness… The only industry that will flourish in Iraq is that of the killing industry, because this is the only ground Saddam Hussein has, to reassert his authority.

 

13:08:02

(Voiceover)

 

But of course the West had no interest in aiding another Shia revolution. Saddam Hussein, who is now busily rewriting history, has come out on top again. One of the enduring ironies is his own rhetoric; comparing himself with that great Islamic hero, the Grand Son of the Prophet Imam Husayn. For having soared against the West, against hopeless odds, with no chance of victory. Just for the principle.