A Family in Baghdad

Thursday, March 23rd, 2006
Good morning…….
The situation in Iraq is very dangerous currently; there are street fights in Baghdad and other cities, the connections are cut-off, the occupation forces closed the Internet Cafés in the hot towns, like Sammara'a, Al-Qaim, and Al-Ramadi, cutting off their communications with the Iraqi and international cities, meaning- even someone living in Iraq wouldn't know what is happening there…
I try to call by Mobile phone, and written messages, some of them get through, and a lot don't…
I called my sister in Jordan, and she says the boarders with Iraq are also closed, and every connection with the people there by Internet was cut off….
Our people there are besieged; by an occupation force which commits crimes against civilians and children, by mercenaries who kill, kidnap, and ravage, corrupting the country, by criminal militias who perform eliminations and sectarian revenges, while people are hiding in their houses, aiming to protect their children and families from violence and killings. The Iraqis say: Someone out there is destroying our country, and we are hiding in our houses, without any power or might, without being able to do anything? We cannot defend our country?
A friend of mine there told me yesterday, by Phone message: Each of us is holding his shroud by his hands, awaiting death…
Her words struck me, leaving me stunned and sad all day, and all night, imagining their life, feeling panic, awaiting death each second….
People are in grave pain and sadness, saying that these are the worst days since Baghdad fell, these are the most dangerous stages, and the darkest for us…
Who can help them to stop the bloodshed, to stop the violence and street fights between quarreling parties, some of whom are perhaps honest people defending Iraq, its land, and its people, and the others are surely just militias and criminal mercenaries, who care about nothing but to receive some dollars; people who lost their principals and ethics, agreeing to become destruction tools against their country and people, to achieve Iraq's enemy's goal in shredding the country, and keeping foreign military bases in it, indefinitely…
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I am still in America to meet people, and talk about our wounded Iraq…
We meet people in churches, universities, and small groups, or those who work in non-governmental organizations. I see that the majority wonder about what is going on in Iraq, the majority are angry, wanting to stop the war, pull out the armies from Iraq, and stop building military bases. And when we went to the Congress Building in Washington, we saw different people, I felt like we were talking to the walls; there are people who do not want to hear what their people are saying, or not even the Iraqis, their ears were closed, and their eyes were shut. They do not want to listen to anything concerning Iraq, someone washed their brains, or rather, they put their personal interest and their positions before all else, and they aren't prepared to listen or change anything that is actually happening on the reality ground…
The big, major media tools join with the American Administration in its war on Iraq, lying and covering up facts, saying that everything is all right, as usual.
Then, in the news bulletins, they say a few brief words about Iraq; either an item about a trapped car and Iraqi casualties, or that the occupation forces are rounding up "insurgents", and besieging towns to "clear" them from insurgents.
And they show pictures of Baghdad, beautiful, its streets crowded with pedestrians, pictures of Baghdad before the war, not the pictures of Baghdad now; a sad city full of garbage, dirt, concrete blocks, barbed wires, and devoid of pedestrians, for people are hiding in their houses….
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Who are the insurgents? Everyone asked me?
I tell them: If an American convoy moved in a region like Al-Ramadi, Sammara'a, Baquba, or any other, and it was subjected to a shooting or a roadside bomb incident, they stop, turn around to the town nearby and close it, besieging it. Sometimes that town would be air raided, like what happened in Al-Qaim, Fallujah, and currently Sammara'a, then all the houses would be stormed, all the men would be detained, insulted, and abused, the women and children would be terrorized. Sometimes families would be killed, like in the latest stories we read about in the newspapers, and when these crimes are uncovered, the comments would be: These are individual transgressions, like what they said about the Abu Ghareeb pictures, and that they were individual behaviors, while in truth they were the normal, daily actions committed against the Iraqis. All this pushed people to hate the Americans, feeling anger against them, which pushed men to resist them. These are called Insurgents. Meaning- everyone who does not love them, and does not want them to remain in Iraq is an insurgent terrorist…
And whenever they detained new people, they created anger in the hearts of their relatives, neighbors, and friends, and thus creating a new group that hates them, welcoming any violent acts against them…
This is the actual reality in the Iraqi towns; anger is increasing in the hearts of men and women in all towns, these who were besieged, bombed, and its people dislodged, or those who heard the stories, and so, there is hatred increasing, and anger. A will growing in the hearts of the Iraqis towards the occupation forces: Get out of our country…
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The American government is in a real dilemma…
The American people are angry, wanting to know the truth; what are they doing in Iraq?
The media here do not tell the truth; they do not say that hundreds of Iraqis die each day at the hands of the occupation forces, or the mercenaries and gangs that work for them, to tear the country apart, forcing people to accept the idea of sectarianism and civil war, to apply the Federalism theory brought on by Premer, and set it down in the constitution…
I look at the newspapers here, and the statements of the American administration… I don't know why, but I laugh a lot, from all the lies I see and listen to…
Ramisfeild says, for example: Those who want to stop the war in Iraq are those who think like Al-Zarqawi, who do not want democracy or freedom for the Iraqis…
He says: The Iraqis went on and voted for the new constitution, which they wrote by their hands, and the Iraqi security forces are now capable of rounding up the foreign terrorists in Iraq…
And my comments to that are:
Those who want to stop the war want to save millions of innocent civilian souls, whose lives were destroyed by this war, and who were the true victims since the blockade till now… towns are besieged, houses bombed, and civilians die. Men, most of whom are innocent, get arrested; they are imprisoned, insulted, and tortured, their crime is that they do not like their country to be occupied. This is their only crime…
Then again- the new constitution was not written by Iraqis, but Premer, the American governor, wrote its draft, then told the Iraqis to write it, then vote for it. What is this phony, deformed democracy?
Is this the democracy for which they bombed Iraq, and destroyed it, people and land, in order to apply?
And then again; the new Iraqi security forces work with the occupation forces in storming houses, terrorizing families, and insulting Iraqi men (not the foreigners) and arresting them. People hate the Iraqi security men, saying they were mercenaries who agree to work with the occupation forces in raiding houses and arresting citizens, these who think only of their paychecks, (around $400). People are dying of hunger, and these are just mercenaries or fools who were told- you are building the new Iraq, and they believed this story. Like most American soldiers who were told- you are going in a noble mission to liberate Iraq, and when they got there, some of them discovered the truth of that mission, and some remained dumb fools, who think that every Iraqi in front of them is a terrorist who deserves arrest, imprisonment, or death…………
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Then I saw some of Bush's speeches; of course he insists that the operation in Iraq is going on successfully, that the country is being "cleaned" from the evil insurgents, and the Iraqis are celebrating democracy, and are feeling happy about it, specially the women, after President Bush Liberated them…
Ha,ha,ha… I laughed a lot…
From what did President Bush liberate us?
I told the people: Women had their rights in Iraq before the war as follows: women had the right to study, work, drive cars, nominate themselves in the elections and vote, choosing the husband they want, traveling, carrying her family name after marriage without change, and she receives an equal salary to men in every profession…
In Iraq there are women engineers, doctors, lawyers, judges, general managers, university professors, and everything…
What will Mr. Bush bring over to us?
Also in his speech, he says that the people are happy, they wrote the new constitution, and voted for it…
The same lie…
And that now there is the freedom of Worship in Iraq…
What does the freedom of Worship mean?
All our lives we lived in a freedom of Worship; Muslims from different sects, Christians from different sects, Baptists, and others, living in mixed residential districts, mixed schools, and the state offices had employees from all sects…
All our lives we lived under the canopy of being Iraqis…
What happened to us now?
The canopy was ripped apart when the occupation entered, when they started spreading the ideas of dividing Iraq under the pretext of providing justice to the different sects, then, marketing the culture of revenge against the Other, crushing him, and taking more rights than him. People were dispersed, pushed to think selfishly, individually. And in a time when the country needed unity and the gathering of ranks, the people were ripped apart under the pretext of "the right of minorities". People were divided into minorities quarreling among themselves, so the occupation would remain out of the equation; fight among yourselves, like barbarian tribes, the occupation stays, and Bush would tell the world: we want to remain in Iraq, for there is a civil war ahead…
This is what they are doing, actually; dividing people, provoking them against each other, then say: Oh, these are savages, let us sit here, and build military bases, to protect them from civil war…
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A small example of the American administration's policy, is what they did to the Iraqi women ant their rights:
They brought on leaders wearing turbans, sectarians, their mentalities as far as can be from true Islam, their minds selfish, and narrow, spreading, not gathering, seeking the narrow interest, not the public interest, and their attitude is retard, against women…
And the items concerning women in the new constitution are full of backwardness and regress. There was an Iraqi Personal Affairs Law since 1958, a law that respected women, giving them rights, and organizing family affairs in a modern way that doesn't contradict with Islam… but the new laws in the new constitution are ambiguous and regressed, referring each sect to its clergy, so he could decide the claims and rights of the woman and family, according to the narrow mentality of that sect, meaning- they pushed us back to the Mullah (=top clergyman) reign of centuries ago…
Then, as I have seen later on, some conferences for Iraqi women are held in Jordan, sponsored by the Congress, or the Rand American Foundation, and they tell women: Go and fight the new, backwards rulers in Iraq, demand women's rights, remove Al-Sharee'a (Islamic law) out of the Family organizing Laws, and use the SEDAW treaty instead….
I have written about this in my previous diaries, when I attended these conferences, and saw the address brought on by the sponsoring authorities of the Iraqi women conferences…
It became clear to me completely how dirty their policies are, how destroying, and how tearing they are to our societies…
The Iraqi women attending these conferences didn't understand the game and its details; some were fools enough to imagine that Bush and the occupation are defending them… some discovered the game, but were opportunists without conscience, and thought of their personal interests before those of the people, and the country's future…
And others discovered the game, and preferred to withdraw…
This is but a small sample of the occupation's policies among the Iraqi people…
And when I go back to the history of this administration, or the ones before it, I find the same idea repeated…
Who "created" Bin Laden and provided him with weapons and money to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan? He was their striking hand and their favorite man, and when his role was over, they turned against him, and he became their enemy, and so they waged their campaign on terrorism, raided Afghanistan, and destroyed it…
Well then; who "created" Saddam Hussein, put him on to rule, encouraged him, provided him with weapons to fight Iran for 8 years, and destroy Iraq's economy? Who gave him the chemical weapons, which he threw over the poor Kurds?
That same administration, especially Ramisfeild…
Then, they disagreed with Saddam, and came on to destroy Iraq, occupy it, and build military bases in it. If their enemy was only Saddam Hussein, they were supposed to oust him, and leave the Iraqis to build their state they way they see fit, and retain their army and police force, because the loyalty of those is to the new Iraqi National government, and there's no fear from them…
But the occupation forces interfered, by disbanding the Iraqi Army and Police Force, installing pro-American leaderships, and forming a sectarian army, police force, and a sectarian constitution. This is what happened; this is the compulsory intervention to change Iraq's fate, and draw its future by foreign hands. This was the deadly, mistaken point that evoked the anger of the Iraqis, the Arabs, and the Muslims, and made Iraq fall a victim to violence, turbulence, and on going fighting, till now…
The Iraqis reject the idea of a foreign occupation forces, or a pro- Bush administration government. The Iraqis want to build their country and future in a way of their choice, they want to invest the fortunes of their country in a way that would provide happiness and justice to their people, not to foreign investing companies that would plunder the wealth, putting the dollars into the hands of a few, and deny the rest of the people the good life…
The Iraqis are brave, intelligent people, ready to fight till death in defense of right and justice, they do not like injustice, lying, or to be humiliated by anyone…
Iraq will remain in fire, until the Iraqi's wishes come true: The departure of the occupation forces, stopping the building of foreign military bases, forming a National Unity Government, one that is honest to its people… not a bunch of monkeys and mercenaries aided by the occupation army…
It is only a matter of time…
The Iraqi's wishes will come true, sooner or later…
And we will all remember- who stood up, and spoke words of truth, in the times of darkness and injustice…
And who stood up to speak untrue words, and falsehood…
We will remember all this, when we liberate Iraq, and build it a new…
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There is a minority of Iraqis who approve of the war. I met some of them, and understand their point of view: They are a minority number of people who had a painful personal experience with Saddam, so they bear a grudge against him, and against the whole of Iraq. They left Iraq, and encouraged the war against it, just for personal revenge; they didn't think of the fate of the innocent victims, the children and families, because they harbor hatred on everything, they think the Iraqis are just scum, who deserve what is happening to them…
I met some of these people who live in Washington, and I was amazed by their way of thinking, and their meanness, but they are a selfish, degraded group, who care for nothing but their personal interests, caring nothing for what is happening to the poor, innocent families in Iraq. Their hatred of Saddam blinded their eyes, and covered up everything…
They lost the balanced, sensible outlook in analyzing the situation…
These are no longer Iraqis- not in nationality, nor in the heart, these people live in their miserable world, after they lost every beautiful thing in their souls…
There are some Iraqis living here, who fear for their residency card and the American nationality they carry, more than their fear for Iraq and its fate…
And there are some Iraqi merchants and contractors who also live without an identity, without belonging, or a national spirit… those used to swarm around Saddam Hussein to get contracts and dollars, without caring for the fate of the oppressed Iraqis, and now they swarm around and flatter the occupation, in order to gain more dollars…
And there is another faction of opportunists, who work as translators or mercenaries, accompanying the occupation forces, who care for the salary they get, more than they care for the cleanliness of their consciences…
There is also a faction of men and women working with the new Parties, most of whom are insignificant opportunists, who prefer positions and personal interests, while many of the clean people withdrew from the political process now, after they discovered the severity of the situation, the injustice of the occupiers, and their transgressions. So, those who refused to participate in destroying their country withdrew, and those who cared for nothing but their personal interests remained, in most cases…
But I always say…
The true Iraqi is that who lived inside, who suffered from the wars of Saddam Hussein, and lost his loved ones in those wars, the true Iraqi suffered from the blockade, hunger, and poverty, lived through the last war, witnessed the devastation, ruin, and killing, and remained independent, far away from politics, sad, dazed because of what is happening around him. One who is trying laboriously to remain alive with his family, away from violence and murder, one who did not join with Saddam Hussein or the occupation forces in hurting his neighbors and his people, who wasn't persuaded by all the poisons that were broadcasted by the occupation, when they divided the people, and planted in their minds the love of revenge, and the acceptance of sectarianism and racism…
These are the true Iraqis, whom I am proud of being one of them, sensing them, talking about their sufferings, and they are the poor, crushed, overwhelmed millions…
Those are the ones who have the right to choose new, nationalistic leaderships for Iraq… leaderships of intellectual men and women, honest people who love Iraq, believe in its unity, and do not discriminate between one faction and another…
From among them the leaders of the new Iraq shall emerge, demanded by the people to save Iraq from what he is suffering now; from the destruction, ruin, hate, and the violence planted by the occupation…
The occupation must get out of Iraq, and with it will go all those who supported its evil notions in dividing and shredding Iraq…
They will get out…
The Iraqis will defeat them, and push them out…
The brave, smart Iraqis, who do not accept lies, deception, and injustice…
The true Iraqis will prevail…
I believe completely in this…
The true Iraqis will prevail….
It is only a matter of time…..
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Translated by May/Baghdad.

Good morning
this email is from Baghdad, I got it before 5 minutes
its talking about the horrible conditions they are living in.
I just want Arab people who are living outside Iraq , to see the reality inside Baghdad.
facts on ground, as I used to say
for nonArab people, ask somebody to translate it
all my best
faiza


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السيدة ام رائد العزيزة:

تحياتي واشواقي، ودعائي لكم بالخير والسلامة...

منذ حوالي أسبوع كامل، تأتي يوميا سيارات بها ناس ملثمين، ويخرجون شخصين او ثلاثة من السيارة ويطرحونهم ارضا، ثم يقتلوهم بالرصاص في وضح النهار وامام الناس. هذه الاحداث في منطقتنا فقط، ولكِ ان تقيسي على باقي المناطق. ارتفاع متزايد في عدد الجثث التي يجدها الناس في مناطق بغداد المختلفة كل صباح، والشرطة والحرس يرفضون ان يحملوها في بعض الاحيان!! ويخاف الناس ان يقدموا لهم اية اسعافات اولية لمن قد يكون على قيد الحياة. ارتفاع في عدد المعارك التي تحدث بين مسلحين (؟!) ومسلحين (!؟) وقوات الأمن، اعداد من القذائف تتساقط على العديد من الدور السكنية.
قنينة الغاز تواصل هبوطها السعيد من 15,000 دينار الى 11,000 دينار للقنينة الواحدة، (هذا ان وجدت)، والبنزين اصبح يسعر 250 دينار للتر في كافة المحطات، الحكومية والأهلية، أما الكهرباء فيأخذ دورة تدريبية لتذكيرنا بتصاعد معدلات القطع مع الصيف.
الحكومة (الغائب الحاضر) هي الجهة التي يلومها الجميع على كل المشاكل، ولكن لا يوجد أي تفاؤل بتحسن مستقبلي ملحوظ، والحال على ما تعرفين من التناحر حول الكراسي.
أرجو ان لا اكون قد ازعجتك، فالهموم كثيرة، ولكن الأمل بالله لا ينقطع.

مع خالص حبي.