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Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Base surrounded by sea of sewage, trash, bodies
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeremy Redmon/AJC
A massive garbage dump lies just outside Camp Rustamiyah in eastern Baghdad. If that wasn't enough, the base is plagued with pesky flies in warm weather and it sits next to a sewage treatment plant.
Camp Rustamiyah, Iraq — This is possibly the most miserable place for soldiers to serve in Iraq. Maybe even the world.
Consider how this U.S. military base has an awful-smelling landfill just outside its gate. A sewage treatment plant stinks up the area on another side.
Throw in thousands of pesky insects. Add scores of dead bodies floating down nearby canals. And you get Rustamiyah.
“It’s got it all,” joked Col. Rod Barham, of Columbus, commander of the Fairfield, Calif.-based 49th Military Police Brigade.
Often, the base smells like rotten eggs, probably from the sewage plant. Since July, 290 bodies have floated into the plant. Many of the victims were found bound, semi-nude, tortured, mutilated and shot in the head.
Soldiers speculate people are dumping the bodies in a canal north of their location in the slum of Sadr City.
On top of that, the warm weather brings out waves of ferocious, biting sand flies and mosquitoes.
Consequently, the camp has earned the nickname “Rustaflyah.”
“You get back in your Humvee and the whole thing is black with flies,” Barham said.
Just outside the camp walls sits a vast dump, filled with mounds of trash. Some Iraqis live in small huts dotting the landfill. Shepherds let their flocks chew through the scum.Packs of stray dogs often lope through the maze of smelly debris.
“It smells like [excrement] and dead animals combined as one,” said Spc. Joseph McGraw, 21, of the Fort Benning-based 988th Military Police Company.
McGraw, who has drawn guard tower duty with a view of the dump, said he once observed children eating out of the garbage there.
But McGraw prefers to look on the bright side about Rustamiyah. It could be worse, he said.
Really?
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