In a land of death, Iraq’s morgue workers seek answers

The middle-aged man was killed at night, walking to his car in the Iraqi capital. No one seemed to know who did it or why.

The man’s bloated corpse lay on the metal examining table. His family waited outside. The only solid information about his death was in a vial that Doctor Aysa, a forensic pathologist, was holding in the air.

“Two bullets in the chest and one in the head,” she said.

In this country awash in death, most killers are never caught. The brutal Islamic State militants kill with impunity in the cities they control. Elsewhere, Iraqi police are too poorly trained, too overwhelmed, too powerless to solve cases. Sometimes they themselves are the perpetrators.

But the Baghdad morgue is one of the few places where you can get answers.

“We see the dark side of society,” said Doctor Iman, a 36-year-old radiologist. “I think we see the truth — not just what we see on television or read in the newspaper.”

Iraq’s homicide rate soared during the Sunni-Shiite fighting of 2006-2007, then plunged. Now it is rising again. According to the U.N. mission for Iraq, at least 1,265 civilians were killed in August 2014, compared with 716 a year earlier. The jump reflects the rise of the Islamic State group but also other factors. The slashes and burns on recently delivered bodies suggest that old tactics from the sectarian warfare are returning.

The morgue workers, dressed in their blue smocks and surgical masks, try to bring science to this anarchic world. They know things about the landscape of violence that slip past other people.

They know how death comes not just from car bombs or militia gunmen but from a crumbling state. A startling number of Iraqis die from electrocution in generator accidents — a sign that 11 years after the U.S. invasion, the government still can’t provide a basic level of electricity to its citizens.

They know that suicide has been on the rise this year, especially among young women who drink rat poison or set themselves on fire because they’re so depressed.

The doctors, of course, can’t make up for an inept police department or a corrupt state, or do much about the massacres in areas that Islamic State controls.

Sunday 14 September 2014

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-a-land-of-death-iraqs-morgue-workers-seek-answers/2014/09/13/192fe5b5-3a40-4e32-9896-8ade357854ad_story.html