July 4, 2006

Revenge in Basra

An Iraqi-born, Australian economist’s family may have been shot in revenge for his advisory work

FOR most of us, the fog of the Iraq war is its statistics – the thousands killed, the millions injured, homeless and affected, the billions of dollars wasted in its prosecution.

But for LaTrobe University economist Imad Moosa, it’s about a single life – his sister Lawahid’s, struggling to survive in a Basra hospital.

Basra-born Moosa told The Bulletin earlier this year of his concern for 42-year-old Lawahid and her husband Ali. Both worked for the British consulate in Basra. Moosa felt guilty
he’d made them an insurgent target because just days after the Bush-Blair-Howard forces ousted Saddam in 2003, he was summoned from his Melbourne office by Washington to
advise on reconstructing the shattered post-Saddam economy.

One of the world’s leading experts on the Iraqi economy, Moosa was no collaborator. An Australian citizen for more than a decade, the first the Howard government knew of his special expertise – indeed, his unique role in their ill-conceived adventure – was when Washington handed it the bill for work Canberra had no idea he was doing, or was even capable of. While in Baghdad, Moosa noticed the “Rambos” of the Australian Wheat Board, another group Canberra seemed not to know much about.

“Because of my work for the coalition authority, my siblings have been living in danger,” Moosa told The Bulletin. “Lawahid has been receiving death threats. The fact [my
family] are part of the Sunni minority in Basra, who are subject to ethnic cleansing, does not help.”

That was in March, in the last paragraph of The Bulletin’s profile of the modest La Trobe economist. Last week, we received a devastating email from Imad Moosa.

“Do you remember the last paragraph of the piece you wrote for The Bulletin after talking to me? Well, it has happened. My sister and her husband have been shot. He is dead,
and she is fighting for her life in hospital. Regards, Imad.”

Lawahid and Ali were struck down on their way to work on June 18. Just days earlier, they’d received a warning from Basra’s Imam Hussein Shia militia: “In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful, the Killer of the Tyrants, to the British occupation forces and the traitors who collaborate with them,  we will not show any mercy towards anyone
dealing or collaborating with the infidel occupier, including translators and workers. We will direct blows that will make the believers happy and the infidel unhappy.”

Ali, Lawahid’s husband of just six months, was killed instantly. Lawahid is critical but stable, the militia’s bullets lodged deep in her abdomen, encased in her shattered spleen, colon and bowel. Moosa is desperate to get his sister out of Iraq, to Australia for a new life. Three years after Iraq was supposed to have been pacified, the militias roam Basra’s
streets free to kill, to take out their anger on the likes of Lawahid Moosa.