{"id":173096,"date":"2020-11-23T12:00:51","date_gmt":"2020-11-23T12:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=173096"},"modified":"2020-11-23T04:08:13","modified_gmt":"2020-11-23T04:08:13","slug":"the-children-of-fallujah-the-medical-mystery-at-the-heart-of-the-iraq-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/11\/the-children-of-fallujah-the-medical-mystery-at-the-heart-of-the-iraq-war\/","title":{"rendered":"The Children of Fallujah: The Medical Mystery at the Heart of the Iraq War"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Illustration by Molly Crabapple.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Since the 2003 invasion, doctors in Fallujah have been reporting a sharp rise in birth defects among the city\u2019s children\u2014and to this day, no one knows why.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

9 Nov 2020 – <\/em>T<\/span>hree years after American soldiers besieged her city, Iraqi pediatrician Samira Alani began to see a problem in the maternity ward. Women were bearing infants with organs spilling out of their abdomens or with their legs fused together like mermaids\u2019 tails. Some looked as if they were covered in snakeskin. Others emerged gasping, unsuccessfully, for air. No one knew what was wrong with the babies, although almost no one was trying to find out, either. It was 2007, the height of the political and sectarian violence unleashed by the US invasion and occupation<\/a>. Fallujah, where Alani lived and worked, was considered one of the most unstable and inaccessible cities on earth.<\/p>\n

The news about the babies spread from the hospital corridors to the inner courtyards of the city\u2019s homes, whispered among female relatives and neighbors. Entisar Hussein, a housewife in Fallujah, learned about the deformities after a cousin returned from the maternity ward. \u201cOne woman, she had a child with a tail, and one, she had a child with a rabbit\u2019s face,\u201d Hussein recalled her cousin telling her. The sickness crept into Hussein\u2019s family, too, she said: One of her sisters-in-law delivered an infant without skull bones to protect the brain tissue; the baby died at birth. Another sister-in-law had two miscarriages and then gave birth to a child with an enormous, bloated head. He died, too.<\/p>\n

Soon Fallujah\u2019s children became a topic of concern at tribal meetings and in the provincial doctors\u2019 union. Many residents suspected that the major American offensives against the city might have had something to do with the deformities. The second offensive, which began in early November 2004, was the deadliest battle of the entire US war in Iraq\u2014a six-week siege that killed thousands of Iraqis and dozens of Americans and left much of the city in rubble. But these suspicions were kept quiet. Outside people\u2019s homes, just beyond the iron front doors, US Marines patrolled the streets, and residents said they feared the United States wouldn\u2019t respond kindly to insinuations of having sparked a public health crisis. Moreover, the Americans weren\u2019t the only actors that Fallujans had to consider. The Shiite-led national government in Baghdad, which many viewed as a puppet of Washington and Tehran, was engaged in a campaign of arrests, torture, and political retribution against its critics, particularly in Sunni-majority areas like Fallujah. In Fallujah, various Iraqi parties and militias were jockeying for political power, and they, too, sought to control the spread of information for their own agendas.<\/p>\n

But even if people hadn\u2019t been afraid, doctors and residents said it didn\u2019t seem there was much anyone could do about the birth defects in those days. All across Iraq, the US invasion had unleashed a wave of violence<\/a> against doctors, whose relative wealth and high profiles made them easy targets amid the country\u2019s growing sectarian strife. By 2007, when Alani began to notice the birth defects in Fallujah, the Iraqi Medical Association estimated that half of registered doctors had been forced to flee the country. Those who remained, like her, risked not only arrest, kidnapping, and assassination but also the reality of straitened working conditions, brought on by shortages of drugs, medical equipment, and both water and electricity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe felt that there was something wrong,\u201d she recalled. \u201cBut we could do nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n