Editor's note: This is part of a series of
reports CNN.com is
featuring from
an Anderson Cooper special this week, "Live from
Iraq," which airs at 10 p.m. ET.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Sheik Jamal al-Sudani leads a
group of volunteers with one of the most solemn tasks
in Iraq: Collecting and burying the hundreds of
unclaimed dead every month and giving them a proper
burial.
"I only think about one thing: That one day, I will
face the same fate as these people have faced, and
will there be someone to take care of me and bury me,
too?" the sheik told CNN.
The discovery of slain bodies in bustling, war-torn
Baghdad is a daily fact of life, as ever-present as
the lively markets, the solemn mosques, the blinding
sunrise and the soft sunset.
Many of the bodies of the slain men, women, and
children -- found on the streets, in the sewers and
in the ruins of bombings -- have never been claimed
because some are so mangled and charred, they're
unidentifiable.
As a result, many people have no idea whether their
loved ones were killed or took flight to other
cities. Others are afraid because they are Sunni and
won't cross sectarian lines to claim the bodies at
the Health Ministry morgue, controlled by Muqtada
al-Sadr's hard-line Shiite followers.
And so religious volunteers, like al-Sudani, who
regard a respectful burial of these victims of war as
a crucial calling, have come forth to give the dead a
proper resting place.
"I look to them as human beings, with it my duty to
bury them so their sanctity will not be violated
again after the violation of their killing," the
sheik said.
This is the state of life -- and death -- in Baghdad:
the cauldron of the Sunni-Shiite sectarian civil
warfare that has escalated since the bombing of the
Askariya Mosque in Samarra in February 2006.
It is a reality in the back of the minds of officials
such as Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq,
and Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in
the country -- both of whom will brief the U.S.
Congress this week on the state of progress in Iraq.
The unidentified bodies have been showing up in
significant numbers in morgues ever since the
Askariya bombing, thought to have been carried out by
Sunni militants.
Most of the dead are believed to be victims of
sectarian animosity, slain after they were kidnapped
or assassinated in so-called extra-judicial killings
or in massive bombings.
Such grim volunteer work isn't entirely new to the
region. Under former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the
sheik said, they often buried more than three dozen
unidentified corpses a month.
After the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, that number rose
to around 250 a month, he said. Following last year's
Askariya bombing, the volunteers buried as many as
2,000 per month. The numbers now are back in the low
hundreds, the sheik said.
These volunteers -- also Shiites with access to the
Health Ministry -- are compelled by conscience and
faith and take it upon themselves to bury the dead in
holy anonymity.
Despite their sectarian affiliation, these volunteers
are moderate in spirit, intent on burying Sunnis and
Christians, as well as members of their own sect.
"When I enter the morgue, I don't see these human
beings as Christian, Shiite or Sunni because I see
them in death, embracing each other," said al-Sudani,
a cleric from a small charity in Baghdad's Sadr City.
It is arduous work for these Shiite volunteers, who
do what they can to repel the touch and odor of
death.
The sheik and his comrades haul bodies more than 150
miles from Baghdad to Najaf in refrigerated trucks,
and the graves are dug by hand.
The bodies are numbered and photographed, and the
information is put into a database. Then they are
prepared for burial, washed in sand and wrapped in
shrouds in the traditional Muslim fashion.
The bodies are laid side-by-side, two to a grave.
The process overcomes the sheik, who is struck by the
depressing otherworldliness of the tragedy.
"Now you see Iraqis' houses, meant to be a family's
safest place, have become like graves for their
families, because any minute, any second, they're
ready to die by explosion, airstrikes or car bombs."
The sheik emphasized the gravity of today's horrors,
compared with other eras. He and his volunteers don't
need military or congressional reports to tell them
of progress in Iraq -- for they bear witness.
"Now it's as if the streets are flowing with blood."
CNN's
Youssif Basil, Tommy Evans, Michael Ware and Joe
Sterling contributed to this report.