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 past 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 e-mails from others
in Iraq, civilian and soldier alike.
What
I know from these e-mails is that the articles on
Iraq one normally reads in the local newspaper,
even when, for instance, they cover the
disintegration of the Iraqi health system or the
collapse of the economy, provide 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 because of 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 18, 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 2-3pm, 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 two 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 28 e-mail from a Kurdish
friend (who is also a US citizen) went this way:
It is worse than ever. The problem
is that our US government and the Iraqi
"government" tell the world that things are
improving here when they are not. All of the
rebuilding bull is nothing but a scam that is
worse than the oil-for-food program [of the
post-Gulf War 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 [3.8 liters] of [gasoline] 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
in essence 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 [US] forces. Every
day we see the dead bodies near our homes which
have been killed by militias. We watch how the
US 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 Shi'ite
area. They had to run away just because they are
Sunni.
Every day the US troops raid so
many houses in my area and arrest so many
innocent people. Yet when the Americans arrest
one of the [Shi'ite] militia members, they
release him the very next day! Why?
I
hope I can show you how the dogs have started
eating the dead bodies which lie in the streets
of Baghdad now. I filmed one of the dead bodies
while there was a dog eating it. The US troops
and Iraqi police leave the dead bodies in the
streets for one or two days ... I think they
intend to do this because they want everyone,
including the children, to see this. Three days
ago my young son saw some of the Shi'ite militia
as they killed an innocent Iraqi in front of his
eyes just near his school.
Oh Dahr, I
don't know what to say about my wounded country.
Every Iraqi wants to bomb himself because of
this shit life. Now Iraq is nothing like it was
when you were here last, as bad as it was then.
It has become very difficult to find someone who
smiles. Everyone is sad and crying. This is true
and this is our life now. The problem is that I
know everything because I am filming so many
people who are suffering.
Then there
are the e-mails I get from American soldiers or
their family members. In October, I received one
from a mother whose
