MB Civic

Baghdad Burning
… I’ll meet you ’round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and
souls can mend…

Saturday, June 10, 2006

Zarqawi…

So ‘Zarqawi’ is finally dead. It was an interesting piece of news that
greeted us yesterday morning (or was it the day before? I’ve lost track of
time.). I didn’t bother with the pictures and film they showed of him
because I, personally, have been saturated with images of broken, bleeding
bodies.

The reactions have been different. There’s a general consensus amongst
family and friends that he won’t be missed, whoever he is. There is also
doubt- who was he really? Did he even exist? Was he truly the huge terror
the Americans made him out to be? When did he actually die? People swear
he was dead back in 2003. The timing is extremely suspicious: just when
people were getting really fed up with the useless Iraqi government,
Zarqawi is killed and Maliki is hailed the victorious leader of the
occupied world! (And no- Iraqis aren’t celebrating in the streets- worries
over electricity, water, death squads, tests, corpses and extremists in
high places prevail right now.)

I’ve been listening to reactions- mostly from pro-war politicians and the
naïveté they reveal is astounding. Maliki (the current Iraqi PM) was
almost giddy as he made the news public (he had even gone the extra mile
and shaved!). Do they really believe it will end the resistance against
occupation? As long as foreign troops are in Iraq, resistance or
‘insurgency’ will continue- why is that SO difficult to understand? How is
that concept a foreign one?

“A new day for Iraqis” is the current theme of the Iraqi puppet government
and the Americans. Like it was “A New Day for Iraqis” on April 9, 2003 .
And it was “A New Day for Iraqis” when they killed Oday and Qusay. Another
“New Day for Iraqis” when they caught Saddam. More “New Day” when they
drafted the constitution. I’m beginning to think it’s like one of those
questions they give you on IQ tests: If ‘New’ is equal to ‘More’ and ‘Day’
is equal to ‘Suffering’, what does “New Day for Iraqis” mean?

How do I feel? To hell with Zarqawi (or Zayrkawi as Bush calls him). He
was an American creation- he came along with them- they don’t need him
anymore, apparently. His influence was greatly exaggerated but he was the
justification for every single family they killed through military strikes
and troops. It was WMD at first, then it was Saddam, then it was Zarqawi.
Who will it be now? Who will be the new excuse for killing and detaining
Iraqis? Or is it that an excuse is no longer needed- they have freedom to
do what they want. The slaughter in Haditha months ago proved that. “They
don’t need him anymore,” our elderly neighbor waved the news away like he
was shooing flies, “They have fifty Zarqawis in government.”

So now that Zarqawi is dead, and because according to Bush and our Iraqi
puppets he was behind so much of Iraq’s misery- things should get better,
right? The car bombs should lessen, the ethnic cleansing will come to a
halt, military strikes and sieges will die down. That’s what we were
promised, wasn’t it? That sounds good to me. Now- who do they have to kill
to stop the Ministry of Interior death squads, and trigger-happy foreign
troops?

—

– posted by river @ 12:47 AM
Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Bad Day…

It’s been a horrible day. We woke up to unbearable heat. Our area averages
about 4 hours electricity daily and the rest is generator electricity,
which means we can use our ceiling fans, but there’s no way we can use air
conditioners.

We woke up to an ominous silence- an indicator that the generator isn’t
working. E. went next door to check and got a confirmation. It might not
work all day. The neighbor responsible for it was going to bring by the
‘generator doctor’ as soon as he was free.

The electricity came at 6 pm for only twenty minutes- as if to taunt us.
The moment the lights flickered on, we were gathered in the kitchen and we
could hear the neighborhood children began to hoot and holler with joy.

Before that, we heard the news about the dozens abducted from the Salhiya
area in Baghdad. Salhiya is a busy area where many travel agencies have
offices. It has been particularly busy since the war because people who
want to leave to Jordan and Syria all make their reservations from one
office or another in that area.

According to people working and living in the area, around 15 police cars
pulled up to the area and uniformed men began pulling civilians off the
streets and from cars, throwing bags over their heads and herding them
into the cars. Anyone who tried to object was either beaten or pulled into
a car. The total number of people taken away is estimated to be around 50.

This has been happening all over Iraq- mysterious men from the Ministry of
Interior rounding up civilians and taking them away. It just hasn’t
happened with this many people at once. The disturbing thing is that the
Iraqi Ministry of Interior has denied that it had anything to do with this
latest mass detention (which is the new trend with them- why get tangled
up with human rights organizations about mass detentions, torture and
assassinations- just deny it happened!). That isn’t a good sign- it means
these people will probably be discovered dead in a matter of days. We pray
they’ll be returned alive.

Another piece of particularly bad news came later during the day. Several
students riding a bus to school were assassinated in Dora area. No one
knows why- it isn’t clear. Were they Sunni? Were they Shia? Most likely
they were a mix. Heading off for their end-of-year examination- having
stayed up the night before to study in the heat. When they left their
houses, they were probably only worried about whether they’d pass or fail-
their parents sending them off with words of encouragement and prayer. Now
they’ll never come home.

There’s an ethnic cleansing in progress and it’s impossible to deny.
People are being killed according to their ID card. Extremists on both
sides are making life impossible. Some of them work for ‘Zarqawi’, and the
others work for the Iraqi Ministry of Interior. We hear about Shia being
killed in the ‘Sunni triangle’ and corpses of Sunnis named ‘Omar’ (a Sunni
name) arriving by the dozen at the Baghdad morgue. I never thought I’d
actually miss the car bombs. At least a car bomb is indiscriminate. It
doesn’t seek you out because you’re Sunni or Shia.

We still don’t have ministers in the key ministries- defense and interior.
Iraq is falling apart and Maliki and his team are still bickering over who
should get more power- who is more qualified to oppress Iraqis with the
help of foreign occupiers? On top of all of this, rumor has it that the
Iraqi parliament have a ‘vacation’ coming up during July and August.
They’re so exhausted with the arguing, and struggling for power, they need
to take a couple of months off to rest. They’ll leave their well-guarded
homes behind for a couple of months, and spend some time abroad with their
families (who can’t live in Iraq anymore- they’re too precious for that).

Where does one go to avoid the death and destruction? Are the Americans
happy with this progress? Does Bush still insist we’re progressing?

Emily Dickinson wrote, “hope is a thing with feathers”. If what she wrote
is true, then hope has flown far- very far- from Iraq.

– posted by river @ 2:53 AM

—
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“Our German forbearers in the 1930s sat around, blamed their rulers, said ‘maybe everything’s going to be alright.’ That is something we cannot do. I do not want my grandchildren asking me years from now, ‘why didn’t you do something to stop all this?” –Ray McGovern,  former CIA analyst of 27 years, referring to the actions and crimes of the Bush Administration