Iraq, Up Close: Bodies And Terror

This Reporter's Notebook was written by CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan.

This is the most cynical example I've encountered of how sectarian violence is destroying Iraq's people.

Not just because patients have been murdered and their family members followed and executed, but because people in need are being denied their most basic human right: to seek medical care.

Ironically, the people who risked their lives to help me tell this story of how medical institutions have been turned into instruments of sectarian slaughter against Sunnis, are all Shiites. Because, as decent human beings, they do not want such acts committed in their name. They do not want the blood of their neighbors and friends on their hands. And they want the killing to stop.

The problem each of them faces is that if, or when, the situation here disintegrates into all-out war, they will no longer have the luxury of principle and choice: they will be forced to ally with their own kind for their survival. And the same can be said for the Sunnis, who are being pushed towards the terrorist organization of al-Qaeda in Iraq, with whom they have absolutely no affinity.

So a country - in which millions of families are made up of both Sunni and Shia - is carving a new chapter of division in its history, written in the blood of innocent people.

What has happened to Baghdad's hospitals is symbolic of what has happened to the entire country. Parties, supported by their armed militias, have taken over the functions of government. The police force and army are not the only institutions that have been infiltrated; the problem extends far beyond - to the very fabric of society.

Sunnis are afraid to apply for passports because they have to go through the Shiite-run Ministry of Interior, which can then trace them and have them killed.

When we went to interview the Minister of Health, we found yellow collection boxes for the Shiite party he belongs to in the grounds of the ministry and at the entrances. Yellow boxes covered in Arabic scrawl, calling on people to contribute to Moqtada al Sadr, the founder and leader of the Mahdi Army milita.

No wonder people associate anything good coming from the ministry with Sadr and credit the Iraqi government with nothing. Parties, and not the government, rule Iraq now - to the extent that Sunnis in Baghdad are too afraid to go to the morgue to collect the bodies of their loved ones because they are being watched and know they could be followed, kidnapped and murdered.

Even Sadr's Health Minister acknowledges that this is happening. What he denies is that the Mahdi Army are the people responsible.

So the bodies in Baghdad's main morgue keep piling up, five filling a space normally occupied by one. And the trucks keep coming, every two to three days, loading up the overflow and shipping them south to be buried in mass graves with no names, only a number. Four months ago, the "cemetery for the unknown" in the southern Shiite city of Kerbala did not even exist; now, there are more than nine hundred unclaimed bodies resting in that dusty ground.

Watching the men wrap the bodies and pray over them, I was struck by how systematic and organized the whole process is. Even in the midst of the madness and the frenzy of bloodletting, there are still rules to be followed, and procedures to carry out. So the bodies are numbered, photographed and records of the slaughter are kept.

It is so like the Iraq I know from under Saddam, when almost every movement of every citizen was documented. The day after Saddam's statue was torn down with the help of U.S. Marines in Fidros Square, I was able to get inside Saddam's much feared Special Security Organization, which had been taken over by the Marines.

They unlocked a gate and let me go into an underground vault that was as vast as fifteen football fields, every inch of it lined with files and paperwork, containing the tiniest details of the lives of millions of Iraqi citizens. Their names, their photographs, their histories, their crimes - billions and billions of sheets of paper, each revealing the entrenched and systematic terror with which Saddam ruled.

Now the terrorized are ruling with the same precision and meticulous attention to detail.

You don't find many people in Iraq who aren't pleased that Saddam Hussein is gone. But it's even harder to find anyone who doesn't think the current situation is worse for most Iraqis, and about to get even worse than that.

One of my old Iraqi friends told me a story that's typical of life in Baghdad today. Picture a traffic jam at the gas station, one of those endless snaking lines you see all over this city. A young man looking in his rearview mirror sees armed men the people believe are members of Sadr's Mahdi Army going to each car, asking to see official Iraqi identity cards and pulling people aside.

This young man is a Sunni, living in a Shiite neighborhood and he believes the Mahdi Army are taking people aside because they're Sunnis. And he believes they will all be killed by them.

So he doesn't wait for them to get to his window – he runs. Trying to get away, running for his life. But they see him running and he is gunned down. Shot in the back. In broad daylight. Dead. Now the house a few doors down from my friend is locked and empty. The dead man's family has fled the neighborhood in fear of their lives.

Welcome to the Baghdad of today.

Where police checkpoints can mean the end of your life. Where the wrong surname in the wrong neighborhood is a death sentence. Where a life-saving visit to a hospital can bring your life to a bloody, violent end.

When you hear that, you start counting the checkpoints your Sunni colleagues have to get through to get to work every day. You start making plans for an emergency evacuation, and how you're going to cover the civil war.

It's not that Sunnis are the only ones suffering and dying. Iraq's Shiites are brutally murdered every day in bombings, shootings and, in some cases, execution-style killings.

But the bulk of the death squads operating in Baghdad today are believed to be Shiites, and as the clear majority in the country, their control in government and their reach across all layers of society is far greater. That has been exploited by their leaders, some hungry for power, some seeking revenge and others simply powerless to do anything.

In this environment, the failure of the U.S. to bring security to Iraq is stark. Many Iraqis say that's the main reason they face this situation today. And others express disbelief that the most powerful nation on earth has not delivered more - and crushed its enemies.

What is clear, as the U.S. military announces heavy casualties and with roadside bombs at an all-time high, is that American soldiers are bearing the burden of a failed strategy and being forced to fight with one hand tied behind their backs, suddenly caught in the midst of two distinct wars: a counter-insurgency and a rapidly escalating sectarian conflict.

And their partners in the counter-insurgency war are participating in the sectarian conflict they're being asked to stop.

To many here, that's so obviously "mission impossible."

But as one American officer said to me when I asked if he felt like they were fighting a war that cannot be won:

"What else can we do at this point? You do the best with what you have."