A Family in Baghdad

Monday, September 28, 2009

Peace be upon you…
The month of Ramadan has passed and the Eid followed
Days are passing quickly…
And I am busy studying…

I have to study a specific subject every week, and then I have to write a post in each week end as a home work.

This year, my online studies are about conflict transformation. It will take a full study calendar year.

If I decided to continue the Master degree next year, I must live in the campus at least for 6 months until I finish my studies and obtain the certificate.
In God's willing, I will be able to finish the Master Degree because I gain so much knowledge and enjoy the subject of my studies. It consists of so much knowledge that I need to explain what has happened in Iraq post occupation and learn about the conflict experiences of other countries and how they were resolved?

I am hoping that I will go back one day to Iraq and spread this knowledge…
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There is a distinct issue in this study,
Most of the writers are Americans. This means that they write about the events from an American perspective. I think that everyone studies in the Western universities faces this problem. I don't mean physics, chemistry or Math because all these subjects are common, regardless of our origins, or intellectual background. The problem arises in social studies and politics like political science or conflict resolutions.
Here the story is an American version of course. ..

Young and naïve students who lack experience may get brain washed and return to his home country to apply the twisted theories that he studied in the western or eastern countries. Most of the time, these theories don't represent the real life in his country. It got worried when I heard that the Iraqi government signed contracts with American Universities to send top of the class high school or college graduates to study in the U.S.
This is a two way weapon.
If young inexperienced students went to the U.S., they could be brain washed and return to their countries to be an execution tool to a foreign agenda.
If they were mature and alert enough, this step will be in favor of Iraq. These students will transfer the technology and the western intellect in a way that will serve the people in Iraq and not leave the country in a follower position to the west.
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As for me I discovered the sweetness of post studies when I was getting older. It is not boring. When I was in my twenties as I finished the engineering degree from Baghdad University, I felt that studying is a heavy duty job that I must complete to obtain the university certificate which is the ticket to enter the job market, start a family and the future.
Now I look at studying from a different perspective. Studying is science, knowledge, power, and light. It motivates human being forward and gives him a change to be more effective in his society…
It could develop his capacities and skills as well as make understand the world around him better. This person could explain to others what he or she has learned if they were ready to listen. This is another problem. Some people don't like to listen. They hold themselves as geniuses who know everything.
I think this is an indicator of stupidity and narrow mindedness…

Anyway, I found in this study a chance to know how the western world thinks.
How do they perceive and interpret the conflicts around the world?
And what is their way of resolving conflicts?
This topic is very interesting to me especially after Iraq occupation and constant attempts to push the country towards civil war as well as bringing leaders who are stranger to the Iraqi public pulse and who don't represent it while regretfully being closer to the invader pulse.
This leadership has wasted the Iraqi blood and money in the process of delivering the invader agenda of dividing the country, weakening Iraq, dismantle society and expel millions out of their homes either in other areas in Iraq or as refugees to neighboring countries.

They pocketed public money by running endless corrupted administrative campaigns. They didn't rebuild the country, its infrastructure, schools, hospitals, streets, water supply and sewerage systems, security, employment or stability. It is sad and shameful. Iraq, the country who sits on lakes of oil, is invested by foreign companies hiring foreign workers while Iraqis are starving due to hunger, poverty and deprivation…
This is real situation and not wrong accusation.
I wish I could find in my country a patriotic government that protects the people and defends their rights. I would be the first one who root for it send them my blessings and prayers.
But we exited a hole to a dark well that is full of snakes…
In God only we trust and ask salvation…
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Anyway, this government reign will end in few months. Next year, there will be elections. We know that the country suffers from corruptions, lies and forgery, but we all should take part of the elections hoping to bring down the corrupted leaders and help new leaders to be in power and hoping that this new leadership will be more patriotic and protective of Iraq and its people.

I am not naïve, but change is realized step by step. It cannot happen overnight. But continuous hard work toward change is our path to liberate Iraq from those snakes…
I remembered the dream I saw just days prior to the occupation: I was standing in a big green garden. A huge yellow snake entered from the broken garden wall. Small snakes came out of this snake and spread all over the garden. They hide under the trees.
I still remember the colorful details vividly….
These snakes have indeed spread all over Iraq since 2003 with different nationalities
There will be always hope to expel them and clean Iraq from their presence.
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I go back to school again and to what I learned from it so far. We just finished the first month… in the first chapters we studied about the different nationalities and ethnicities as well as the common factors that bind each group for example religious, historic or cultural.

And how these groups can collide with each other when an oppression take place on certain group for which basic humanitarian needs are not fulfilled such as food, shelter, job opportunities and other human basic needs. Another group may feel superior and racist just like what Hitler did with the Jews or just like what Jews did to the Palestinians.

How the prosecuted became the prosecutor?
I was asking my self
If morality disappeared as well as values, of course anything can happen; the perpetrator can always justify his crimes...

In the second chapter, we studied about the external hand in starting these conflicts. Of course, this is a very important point and happens so often just like what happened in Iraq after the occupation. They turned the Kurds against the Arabs and turned the Shiite and the Sunnis against each other…

The third chapter was talking about the national wealth such as oil and how it became the focal point of strong western countries. All of them are fighting to step a foot and control the wells of oil to insure the future of this great power or that. Oil is not only a source of funding the industry sector, but also to fund the armies.
This is a very important point to a country like the United States that dreams of military, economical and political dominant over the world indefinitely.
In this chapter, we saw how some countries like Russia and Venezuela has patriotic leaders and national oil companies that invested the profit from oil to enhance quality of life for people and make their countries' political power more effective. Poutin and Shafiz are the source of America's and Europe's worries.
Also Iran has a national oil company. The country is strong and monopolizes the oil then sends it to the west according to their terms.
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and UAE improved their economy by using oil to buy shares in American Banks and companies. All that happened due to the increase of oil prices in the recent years.
Look what happened to these countries in term development, and healthy economy. On the other hand, look at the Sad Iraq, and what happened to it?
Where is the oil money?
No answer…

The oil in Iraq is curse and not a blessing as long as the country lacks a strong patriotic leadership. This wealth will always attract invaders and the greedy to control the country and steal its wealth. It means that they will not leave us alone. They didn't say let's divide the shares among investors, parties, militias, thieves and leave some to the people. They never did.
What we see is that they took all of the oil and the people are left with hunger and poverty.
Even these investing companies brought their workers with them Bengals and others. They left the Iraqi's unemployed. The government is promising companies to protect them from the objections of Iraqi worker unions.
This means that the government protects the capitalist companies with the excuse of protecting investor rights. They are wasting the right of their people and citizens.
How genius, it is unprecedented.
This is globalism, politics of free market, capitalism and the rest of the nonsense that destroys the economies of countries, steals their wealth, bankrupt people and starves them…
Finally Iraq merged into the global market, the apple of Bush's eye and the current Iraqi government. I don't know whether this government is ignorant or what they are doing?
Is it this government a thief who know what they're doing?
The important thing is that they filled their bank accounts with millions of dollars that are stolen from this sad nation.
And let Iraq and their people go to hill…
In God only we trust and ask salvation…
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In the fourth week, we studied about two cases of countries where ethnic conflicts and slaughters have occurred. Rwanda in Africa and Yugoslavia in Europe…
In Rwanda, the reason behind the conflict is the president who took power insanely and surrounded himself with the elite of religious people, educated people and business men. They supported him and they thought that it is an internal political issue and external world has nothing to do with it. Kind off similar to Saddam Hussein in monopolizing power.
But the number of victims who were killed in massacres exceeded half a million men, women and children. It became a big scandal.

Rwanda incidents happened in 1994, we were under siege in Iraq. I remember vividly the news and we were affected deeply by the massacres of these unarmed innocent citizens of a poor African country…
The international community played a shameful negative role. I mean here the United Nations and the political leaders in America and Europe. They ignored the subject completely and ridiculed it. They prohibited one news cast to say the world mass massacre. They were saying ethnic and historic conflict among tribes.
Why?
May be because Rwanda does not interest them. It doesn't have any oil or military bases or nuclear weapons…
Their ugly pale faces were exposed and there is not a shred of empathy in their hearts toward humanity.
They are only moved by their interests and greed…
The leaders of the capital world are without morals or values that respect human being and his life…
They came to invade Iraq and pretend that they are defending human rights and democracy….
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We arrive now to the story Yugoslavia…
I always looked for a western source who will talk about what happened in Yugoslavia.
Finally I found a long detailed essay about each step happened to move what is called a civil war in Yugoslavia. It ended in dividing the country into smaller countries on the European map. There is no Yugoslavia today on the world map…
We read how Yugoslavia was united and strong under General Tito's regime.
After his death in 1980, the conflict has surfaced and the end and the fall of the United Soviets at the end of the eighties. The conflict reached its peak in Yugoslavia and the steps were as follows:
Racist and extremist national leaders appeared in the political arena and dominated the local media and started to stir grudges against other ethnic groups. They started to interpret the past using lies and stories that raise more grudges among people. Then elite groups supported each leader including journalists, media icons, intellects, religious figures, business men and formal military figures. All of them participated in spreading hatred and the desire of dividing the country into smaller independent provinces for each nationality.
Following the theory that people will believe what the medial reiterate, people indeed believed and they were brain washed. Those racist and extremist won in the 1990 elections. They started armed militias and spread the threats among other nations or kill them. It turned into ethnic-cleansing ; Serb against non Serb and kerwatians against non Kerwations. It was a campaign against civilians who were saying according to surveys and interviews conducted by many researchers, we were living like brothers, love and respect each other regardless of ethnic or religious differences. But we don't know how did these extremist leaders win?
These leaders had militias who forced people to hate other ethnicities and reject its existence. They killed anybody who objected to that.
People were fired from their jobs and expelled outside the counties. This happened before the attack, the killings and after forcing people to leave their homes and their places of work. The militias invaded their homes and stole their properties.
There is a resemblance between what happened in Yugoslavia and what happened in Iraq after the occupation.
The same technique means the same steps. This is not spontaneous. These are premeditated plans to tear communities and their strong social fabric. They force people to hate each other and create national provinces or small ethnic disfigured meaningless group. The important thing is dividing the country.
There are extremist leaders who are ready at any place. They would be psychos and nobody care for them. But the circumstances draw them, meaning the invader or external power just like what happened in Yugoslavia when Europe and America raced to tear Yugoslavia and end Russia's power over it for good. They needed such extremist leaders as a tool to achieve the goal…
It means that Yugoslavia was divided despite the desire of people who live in it. It was divided according to a political agreement between external powers and sleazy internal power who share common interests…
But Iraq is not divided yet despite the millions of dollars that were spent in the media to turn people against each other, despite the millions they spent on arming the militias and despite the hundreds of thousands of victims of destructions, killings, and vandalism. However, Iraq is not divided yet…
Election is coming and politicians in Iraq changed their obnoxious ethnic speeches because it didn't earn them the respect of the Iraqis. Now they give respectful patriotic speeches. The plan has changed…
They deceived the Iraqis in the first election and said that we will defend your deprived rights and prosecution that you lived for hundreds of years.
What is our opinion?
After we elected them they denied us and forgot their promises…
We suffered the bad services during their four years of power, we suffered lack of employment, there are homeless who lost their homes and didn't go back. There are refugees who wait to return to Iraq and nobody cares about them.
We witnessed the stealing of the country's wealth and public money. Nothing was achieved for the poor Iraqis who risked their lives and participated in 2005 elections. They challenged violence and security and said we will elect. This is the first step in the right direction to build a unified nation. Then we will get rid of the occupation and build our nation with our hands.
This is what we said to ourselves. But what did we gain from those we elected?
The answer of course is nothing…
Their bank account has grown and we still live in a roundabout: when would Iraq become secure again?
When would 5 million Iraqi immigrant and refugee return to their homes?
When would electricity and water supplies reach the Iraqi houses?
When would the unemployment decrease?
When would the violence stop?
When and when and when?
Years pass and we are still waiting…
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I still have hope that Iraq will remain united because the Iraqis have learned a lot from their history and former crises. The Iraqis are alert and cannot be deceived after today…
I hope that Iraq doesn't go through what Yugoslavia went through….
I wish that the next election is a changing point for the favor of Iraq and the Iraqis… and those new leaderships with more patriotism and devotion will come to be decision makers of the country,
And that occupation is out of Iraq for ever,
And that Iraqis build their home with their hands,
Just like the way they like it to be,
Secured, united and strong.
Amen….
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