The Truth About Iaq III: Anwar Bahjat

I've tried to put human faces on the suffering of the Iraqi people during the long and bloody U.S.-led occupation, but I had to sleep on whether to share the story of Anwar Bahjat because it is just so horrible.

Bahjat was a TV journalist, poet and feminist who was writing a book about the role of women in Iraq. Like most of her countryfolk, she was a practicing Muslim but did not take sides in the vicious sectarian clashes that have punctuated the occupation. In fact, her mother was a Shiite and her father a Sunni.

Bahjat was covering the aftermath of the bombing of the Golden Shrine in Sammara on February 22. It was originally thought that she was killed on the spot, but that turns out to not have been the case.

We'll let the Mudville Gazette take it from here:

Two men drove up in a pick-up truck, asking for her. She appealed to a small crowd that had gathered around her crew but nobody was willing to help her. It was reported at the time that she had been shot dead with her cameraman and sound man.

We now know that it was not that swift for Bahjat. First she was stripped to the waist, a humiliation for any woman but particularly so for a pious Muslim who concealed her hair, arms and legs from men other than her father and brother.

Then her arms were bound behind her back. A golden locket in the shape of Iraq that became her glittering trademark in front of the television cameras must have been removed at some point — it is nowhere to be seen in the grainy film [of her abduction], which was made by someone who pointed a mobile phone at her as she lay on a patch of earth in mortal terror.

By the time filming begins, the condemned woman has been blindfolded with a white bandage.

It is stained with blood that trickles from a wound on the left side of her head. She is moaning, although whether from the pain of what has already been done to her or from the fear of what is about to be inflicted is unclear.

Just as Bahjat bore witness to countless atrocities that she covered for her television station, Al-Arabiya, during Iraq’s descent into sectarian conflict, so the recording of her execution embodies the depths of the country’s depravity after three years of war.

A large man dressed in military fatigues, boots and cap approaches from behind and covers her mouth with his left hand. In his right hand, he clutches a large knife with a black handle and an 8 inch blade. He proceeds to cut her throat from the middle, slicing from side to side.

Her cries — “Ah, ah, ah” — can be heard above the “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest) intoned by the holder of the mobile phone.

Even then, there is no quick release for Bahjat. Her executioner suddenly stands up, his job only half done. A second man in a dark T-shirt and camouflage trousers places his right khaki boot on her abdomen and pushes down hard eight times, forcing a rush of blood from her wounds as she moves her head from right to left.

Only now does the executioner return to finish the task. He hacks off her head and drops it to the ground, then picks it up again and perches it on her bare chest so that it faces the film-maker in a grotesque parody of one of her pieces to camera.

The voice of one of the Arab world’s most highly regarded and outspoken journalists has been silenced. She was 30.

Other gruesome details from a family friend: Bahjat had nine drill holes in her right arm and 10 in her left. The drill had also been applied to her legs, her navel and her right eye.

If the U.S. cannot protect people like Bahjat then it has utterly and absolutely failed to do its job.

(Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Dish.)