December 31, 2005

The two Iraqi scientists, Huda Ammash and Rihab Taha, have allegedly been released after two and a half years of imprisonment. In May 2003, both women were captured by the US-led occupying power because of their alleged role in the development of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq.

But just as much as the other things that the Western aggressors have alleged about Iraq, the allegations have not been proved, and no charges against the two scientists have been raised. But in the Western media this does not matter. In an anti-Arab, racist orgy of hatred, Ammash and Taha have been generally described as "Mrs. Anthrax" and "Dr. Germ", respectively. This was part of the dirty war propaganda by the Americans and the Zionists. Here we had these two "evil witches", who were "Saddam’s weapons experts". They became the faces of fear. Indeed, even the women in Iraq are warlike and filled with hatred against the West, we were told by the imperialist propaganda machine. It is time to set the record straight. The truth about the scientists Ammash and Taha deserves to be told.

Huda Ammash

Ammash was born in Baghdad in 1953. She received her undergraduate degree from Baghdad University in 1975. Hereafter she continued her studies at University of Texas in the US, where she got a masters degree. From 1981 to 1983, she worked at Missouri University in the US from which she got a Ph.D. in 1983. Then she returned to Iraq and taught at the College of Science at Baghdad University from 1983 until 1991. In 1994, she received the Award for Young Scientists from the Shoman Academy in Jordan. From 1995 until 1997, she was the Dean of the College of Science at Baghdad University. In 1996, she was chosen as a member of the Iraqi Scientific Society, and in 2001 she was elected a member of the Islamic Scientific Society. On the political arena, she was a member of the highest Baath Party leadership in Iraq.

But it was her scientific work proving the environmental and health consequences of the war against Iraq in 1991, which brought her the uncontrollable hatred of the US. In several scientific publications she showed how the Americans had used Depleted Uranium (DU), biological and chemical weapons during the First Gulf War in 1991, and that this use was responsible for the rise in cancer rates and mortality, especially among children, in Iraq. From her list of publications can be mentioned "Impact of Gulf War Pollution in the Spread of Infectious Diseases in Iraq" (1999) and "Toxic Pollution, the Gulf War, and Sanctions" (2002).

Therefore, the capture and detention of her should be viewed in this light. It was a revenge for her revelations of the US war crimes during the First Gulf War and afterwards as well as an ill-concealed threat against other patriotic Iraqi scientists, and maybe also a way, through "statements from her", to try to invent stories about the weapons of mass destruction, which did not exist. Today, we know that this last thing did not succeed.

In January 2003, when a group of NGOs and former UN representatives were visiting Iraq, Ammash said:

"People here bear every respect for Western people and Western civilization. We respect your technological accomplishments and your values. Yet hatred is being manufactured by some to engineer a clash of civilizations."

In March 2003, shortly before the aggression, she stated.

"To end one’s career in defence of Iraq is an honour."

Rihab Taha

Taha was born in 1957 and got her masters degree in biology from Baghdad University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of East Anglia’s School of Biological Science in Norwich in the UK, where she stayed from 1980 until 1984. She returned to Iraq, where she worked in the field of veterinary science, among other things, for years.

To the BBC, she said shortly prior to the aggression that she did not have anything to do with the development of biological weapons because these projects had been stopped long time ago.

She also stated that "it is our right to defend ourselves."

Symbols of independent Iraq

And here we are about to get to the point. Today, it is no longer news that more than 300 Iraqi scientists have been murdered in the course of the occupation. Of course, it is not difficult to figure out who are behind these killings. It is those who benefit from an Arab Iraq, which is weak in all fields. It is the US, Iran and Israel collaborating with the aim of depriving Arab Iraq of its brains just as they are stealing its oil.

So, what do Ammash and Taha, who have been dragged through the mud in the Western media, represent?

First and foremost, they represent Iraqi patriotism. Both are examples of independent Iraq, which under the leadership of the Baath Party was constructed from 1968 and onwards, and which, among other things, provided an educational system that not only resulted in the most educated population in the whole Middle East, but also produced outstanding scientists like Ammash and Taha.

Furthermore, they are examples of the independent Iraqi woman, who was working and participating in the society on equal terms with the man and with rights that her sisters in the Middle East only could dream of, rights which today, in occupied Iraq, are things of the past.

And they are examples of two scientists, who – contrary to other Iraqis as for example former puppet Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who were sent abroad in order to get new knowledge, but betrayed their country by being recruited as agents for the US and the UK – used their intellect and other skills for the benefit of their country. Ammash and Taha did not betray their country and people, and when they, by all accounts, together with other prominent figures of independent Iraq have been released, this is only due to the fact that the occupying power is feeling the pressure from the armed Iraqi resistance. With their release, the occupying power will try to influence certain sectors in and around the powerful Baath Party, which was banned by the occupying power shortly after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, but which nothing, up until now, has been able to stop as it is leading the armed resistance.

In this way, Ammash and Taha are strong symbols of the independent and progressive Iraq, which existed before the war, but which today has been turned into ruins and a slaughterhouse, where the Americans and their "Iraqi" lackeys are murdering, looting and raping, while they are screaming and yelling about "democracy" and "human rights".


Carsten Kofoed runs the Free Iraq Blog of Denmark, http://fritirak.blogspot.com/