Dana Smillie

themes: aftermath

adventures in Bigstorystan....

Iraq 2003-2004

An army officer mans the gunner position of the M2A3 Bradley during a patrol in Sadr City.
   
A US soldier holds back the crowds outside the pension office where hundreds of Iraqis have been queuing for hours to receive a $40 pension.
   
Women comfort each other while waiting in line to receive a $40 pension shortly after the invasion of Iraq.
     
  
Members of C-Company, 2nd Battalion, 325th Brigade, 82nd Airborne participate in Operation Golden Triangle in southeast Baghdad region. The battalion cordoned off a troublesome sector in the area to enforce the unauthorized weapons policy.
  
An internally displaced Iraqi woman and her child await resettlement at an encampment.
  
An injured UN worker awaits treatment at Al-Kindi Hospital after a car bomb exploded at the UN headquarters in August 2003.
     
  
Funeral for Mohamed Bakr al-Hakim.
  
The coffin of Ayatollah Mohamed Bakr al-Hakim is loaded on to a truck for the second day of the funeral procession from Karbala, Iraq's second holiest city, to Najaf. The Shiite cleric was assasinated in August 2003 in Najaf in a car bomb attack on the Imam Ali Mosque after Friday noon prayers.
  
     
  
Iraqi women grieve waiting for the coffin of Ayatollah Mohamed Bakr al-Hakim outside the Abbas Shrine in Karbala. Thousands of mourners joined the second day of the funeral procession of the slain Shiite cleric from Karbala, Iraq's second holiest city, to Najaf. Al-Hakim was assasinated in August 2003 in Najaf in a car bomb attack on the Imam Ali Mosque after Friday noon prayers.
  
Journalists investigate the 'spider hole' where Saddam Hussein was captured by US troops on 13 December 2003.
  
Ironically, the spot where Saddam Hussein swam across the Tigris escaping an assasination attempt in 1959 (he went on to Tikrit then to Syria) is a short distance from the farmhouse where a 13 December 2003 raid resulted in his capture by coalition forces.
     
  
A young boy watches as his father is detained by the Major Crimes Unit in Baghdad. The MCU seized the suspect, who lives in the Hai al Amal district, on information that he was a Saudi national funding a nearby camp of gypsies to wage attacks on coalition forces passing on the road near their camp. The MCU is a plain-clothes force that deals with terrorism, fraud and kidnapping.
  
Crowds of mourners march in a funeral procession through the streets of Karbala the day after a wave of bomb attacks killed scores of people during Ashura commemorations, the holiest day in the Shiite calendar.
  
Sheikh Ghulami weeps over the shrouded body of his six year old daughter Mutaharra before her burial at a cemetery in Karbala. Ghulami, an Afghan refugee now living in Kerman Province in Iran, lost his entire family in an explosion in March 2004 near the Abbas Shrine during the Ashura commemorations in one of a wave of attacks that killed scores of people and wounded hundreds more.
     
  
"Tom" the dog survived a car bomb explosionin front of the neighboring Mt. Lebanon Hotel in March 2004. The blast caused extensive damage to neighboring apartment bulidings and flats.
  
The son of a suspect stands in the stairwell of his apartment building as Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC) soldier from 302 Batallion, 40th Brigade (the "Black Lions") exit after searching his flat during raid in the Karrada district of Baghdad. US soldiers from Task Force 1-6 Infantry, who have been training the Black Lions, provided backup but the new ICDC unit planned and executed the operation. The suspect eluded arrest, but the ICDC seized valuable evidence.