Today Is Better than Tomorrow: Iraq as a Living Hell
How much worse can it get in Iraq? My Iraqi friends and colleagues tell me that one of the more popular sayings in Baghdad nowadays is, ‘Today is better than tomorrow,’ notes Dahr Jamai.
The situation in Iraq has reached such a point of degradation and danger that I've been unable to return to report -- as I did from 2003 to 2005 -- from the front lines of daily life. Instead, in these last months, I have found myself in a supportive role, facilitating the work of some of my former sources, who remain in their own war-torn land, to tell their hair-raising tales of the new Iraq. While relying on my Iraqi colleagues to report the news, which we then publish at Inter Press Service and my website, I continue to receive emails from others in Iraq, civilian and soldier alike.
What I know from these emails is that the articles on Iraq you normally read in your local newspaper, even when, for instance, they cover the disintegration of the Iraqi health system or the collapse of the economy, are providing you, at best, but a glimpse of what daily life there is now like. After all, who knows better what's happening than those who are living it?
I thought I might just give you a taste of the sort of private communications I read every day. Take my primary interpreter during my eight months in Iraq, Abu Talat. He was finally forced, like hundreds of thousands of his fellow Iraqis, to flee to a neighboring country due to the nightmarish security situation in Baghdad. Without a regular income, he struggled even to pay the rent for an apartment in a Syrian city, and finally had little choice but to return to Baghdad to sell what was left of his belongings. On November 18th, he wrote me from there:
"I am trying to sell my car. However, prices have plummeted so low that there is barely any active automobile dealing here, or any other marketing for that matter…Life ends at around 2-3 p.m., at which point Baghdad changes into a city of horror. The sounds of mortars and clashes erupt all through the night. (Two explosions just rumbled nearby, but we can't tell the exact location.)"
The next day he wrote:
"Today, while I was arranging for the car to be sold at the highest price I could find, explosions burst almost 50 meters from the place where I was standing. I was forced to hide under the car I was selling for over 2 hours. There were ongoing clashes between the Iraqi Army and resistance fighters in broad daylight in the middle of the capital!"
Even from semi-independent, Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, often described as the most peaceful and prosperous region in the country, the news I get is bleak. A November 28th email from a Kurdish friend (who is also a U.S. citizen) went this way:
"It is worse than ever. The problem is that our U.S. government and the Iraqi ‘Government' tell the world that things are improving here when they are not. All of the rebuilding bull crap is nothing but a scam that is worse than the oil-for-food program [of the post-Gulf War I years]. We have ONE hour of electricity a day now. I have power to turn on some lights and my computer by way of a little generator that I hooked up to my office today. A gallon of gas costs over $4 now, when the salary of an engineer is less than $200 a MONTH."
Terrible as life is when Iraqis across the country find themselves essentially camping out in their own homes with few or no basic services, it pales in comparison to life in Baghdad, the country's capital and home to nearly one quarter of its population. A friend of mine, who works there as a freelance cameraman, sent me this grim summary a couple of weeks ago:
"Life here in Iraq has become impossible because of the militias, sectarian violence, and the occupation [U.S.] forces. Every day we see the dead bodies near our homes which have been killed by militias. We watch how the U.S. troops see these dead bodies and… do nothing to stop this violence. Two of my brothers just left their houses and rented a new place because they were living in a Shia area. They had to run away just because they are Sunni.
"Every day the U.S. troops raid so many houses in my area and arrest so many innocent people. Yet, when the Americans arrest one of the [Shia] militia members they release him the very next day! Why? >>>cont
LinkHere
The situation in Iraq has reached such a point of degradation and danger that I've been unable to return to report -- as I did from 2003 to 2005 -- from the front lines of daily life. Instead, in these last months, I have found myself in a supportive role, facilitating the work of some of my former sources, who remain in their own war-torn land, to tell their hair-raising tales of the new Iraq. While relying on my Iraqi colleagues to report the news, which we then publish at Inter Press Service and my website, I continue to receive emails from others in Iraq, civilian and soldier alike.
What I know from these emails is that the articles on Iraq you normally read in your local newspaper, even when, for instance, they cover the disintegration of the Iraqi health system or the collapse of the economy, are providing you, at best, but a glimpse of what daily life there is now like. After all, who knows better what's happening than those who are living it?
I thought I might just give you a taste of the sort of private communications I read every day. Take my primary interpreter during my eight months in Iraq, Abu Talat. He was finally forced, like hundreds of thousands of his fellow Iraqis, to flee to a neighboring country due to the nightmarish security situation in Baghdad. Without a regular income, he struggled even to pay the rent for an apartment in a Syrian city, and finally had little choice but to return to Baghdad to sell what was left of his belongings. On November 18th, he wrote me from there:
"I am trying to sell my car. However, prices have plummeted so low that there is barely any active automobile dealing here, or any other marketing for that matter…Life ends at around 2-3 p.m., at which point Baghdad changes into a city of horror. The sounds of mortars and clashes erupt all through the night. (Two explosions just rumbled nearby, but we can't tell the exact location.)"
The next day he wrote:
"Today, while I was arranging for the car to be sold at the highest price I could find, explosions burst almost 50 meters from the place where I was standing. I was forced to hide under the car I was selling for over 2 hours. There were ongoing clashes between the Iraqi Army and resistance fighters in broad daylight in the middle of the capital!"
Even from semi-independent, Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, often described as the most peaceful and prosperous region in the country, the news I get is bleak. A November 28th email from a Kurdish friend (who is also a U.S. citizen) went this way:
"It is worse than ever. The problem is that our U.S. government and the Iraqi ‘Government' tell the world that things are improving here when they are not. All of the rebuilding bull crap is nothing but a scam that is worse than the oil-for-food program [of the post-Gulf War I years]. We have ONE hour of electricity a day now. I have power to turn on some lights and my computer by way of a little generator that I hooked up to my office today. A gallon of gas costs over $4 now, when the salary of an engineer is less than $200 a MONTH."
Terrible as life is when Iraqis across the country find themselves essentially camping out in their own homes with few or no basic services, it pales in comparison to life in Baghdad, the country's capital and home to nearly one quarter of its population. A friend of mine, who works there as a freelance cameraman, sent me this grim summary a couple of weeks ago:
"Life here in Iraq has become impossible because of the militias, sectarian violence, and the occupation [U.S.] forces. Every day we see the dead bodies near our homes which have been killed by militias. We watch how the U.S. troops see these dead bodies and… do nothing to stop this violence. Two of my brothers just left their houses and rented a new place because they were living in a Shia area. They had to run away just because they are Sunni.
"Every day the U.S. troops raid so many houses in my area and arrest so many innocent people. Yet, when the Americans arrest one of the [Shia] militia members they release him the very next day! Why? >>>cont
LinkHere
posted by Kangaroo Brisbane Australia at 3:44 PM
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