Omar Fekeiki

Reward the Egyptian right now

2011-02-11T14:13:00.002-05:00

Now that Hosni Mubarak is out of the picture, the superpowers of the world have a responsibility towards “democracy” and a huge role to play in Egypt.

Key words in the future of Egypt now are: money and jobs.

Let’s not forget what ignited the spark: people were hungry, young Egyptians have no clear future and corruption ate the country’s wealth away. 30 years later… bang! Mubarak is gone.

Now, either the army will be the ruler or a transitional government. Either way, there is no chance for an Islamist rule in the next few months. And that's the catch!

The United States, Britain, France, Germany and other key players have to pour money into Egypt… starting tomorrow. Let’s put money into this investment.

It will take billions of dollars over the next three to five years: raise the average Egyptian’s monthly salary, provide loans for small businesses, create jobs, pay for the welfare system and bring down food prices.

These are important steps to encourage the Egyptians to stay in line while they figure out what kind of a government they want. Make the Egyptians happy with their transitional moderate and civil government. We don’t want Egyptians to be poor and hungry while politicians are playing their dirty games.

Let’s not give the Egyptians reasons to be disappointed. What they need to see now is that overthrowing a dictatorship is actually a good thing and the Iraq scenario is not necessarily the only one.

In a country like Egypt, where there is a strong base for Islamists who have political influence, we need to quickly show that a moderate, maybe even secular civil government can bring the positive change.

The last thing the world needs now is frustrated Egyptians in a year or so to vote in an Islamist government, which is a very very likely scenario if the people did not see the change to a better life right away.

People in the Middle East are watching. The United States has struggled with the process of change in Iraq and eventually messed it up, but it doesn’t mean the world should ignore the grassroots change in Egypt.

This is a good chance for The United States to show how good it can be to promote democracy. This will cost billions of dollars and other superpowers should help foot the bill, but it’s worth it. The profit from this investment can bring a better and safer and Middle East.

The other scenario looks like this: no one helps Egyptians, except for encouragement words and wordy statements. Egyptians see no difference with between a transitional government, which is moderate and secular and civil, and Mubarak’s regime. They go to the elections and vote for the Muslim Brotherhood just for the hell of it and for a chance to try something new.

The Middle East ends up with: Iran, extremist Shiite Iraq that does what Iran dictates, extremist Sunni Palestinian Authority funded by Iran and Hizbullah that encourages violence and terrorism, extremist Shiite Lebanon that does what Iran dictates and extremist Muslim Brotherhood Egypt. All that with Israel in the Middle.

Note: I would have suggested that Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Libya and other governments in the region should pitch in in this investment, but history shows that a democratic government around them is not in their interest. We’ll even be lucky if they did not try to sabotage what’s been achieved in Egypt so far.

True, but…

2010-09-19T18:54:00.007-04:00

In a piece in The Independent in 2009 analyzing the “backwardness” of the Arab world, Robert Fisk said: I suspect that a real problem exists in the mind of Arabs; they do not feel that they own their countries.

I thought it was brilliant. I often use that sentence to explain why we are not so keen to bring the change to our societies and governments.

Fisk continued: Unable, for the most part, to elect real representatives … they feel "ruled over”.

But when we talk about Iraq, we have to admit that Iraqis did vote for their representatives. A short while ago a notable change happened and they started to feel that they are the real owners of Iraq and that “maintenance” is inevitable… and started working on it. But what have they achieved?

Another horrible day in Baghdad. 29 killed and more than 100 wounded in suicide attacks targeting civilians and a security building.

Does the word “shame” ring any bell in the hallways of the Iraqi Parliament, maybe a clang so they to convene and work something out to form a government?

It’s just so frustrating to keep watching what is happening, or not happening for that matter, in Iraq. Where are the lawmakers? They’ve been getting salaries since the election results were ratified. What are they paid for?

My frustration, and many others’, is no longer over the scores of Iraqis killed every day; or the thousands of Iraqis fleeing the country every day; or the two million Iraqis living in camps and slums after they’ve been forced out of their homes by the civil war. That’s old news and we’ve given up on them.

Our frustration is now over silencing the young democracy that Iraq could have been and killing hope in the Middle East.

Given Iraq as their best and latest example, how many people in the Middle East are now skeptical about the word “democracy”? What does that word represent to them? How receptive will they be to changes in society and political regimes in the name of “democracy”?

How many people will ask the questions: is Hamas better or “democracy”? Are the Mullahs in Iran keeping the country relatively stabilized, or better try a new “democratic” government? Who is better equipped to deal with the country, Kaddafi or “democracy”?

I can almost hear the answer: look at Iraq!

How will I and people like me who are enthusiastic about western democracy face the ever growing suspicion and dazzled faces in the Middle East when they ask: how do you justify your enthusiasm about a western-influenced democracy?

Isn’t that frustrating?

Sharing Power in Iraq

2010-09-08T19:11:00.004-04:00

The fight over who to appoint as Prime Minster in Iraq is not the main problem, or even the source of it. It’s actually the outcome of a seven-year long debate over power-sharing and how to bring “democracy” to Iraq.

If nothing else was expected of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, an Iraqi government in which the “roundtable” is the platform for decision-making was the goal.

The prophecy was that the exiles were coming back to Iraq--with all the training and experience over 40 years, many of them western-educated--to make an example of Iraq. They were going to rid Iraq of thousands of years of one-man governments and install “the rule of the people.”

Hence, it didn’t matter if Shiites formed a government or Sunnis. It didn’t matter if the government was majorly Arab or Kurd.

In reality, that did not happen. Dominating power started before forming the first Iraqi government, with the formation of the Iraqi Governing Council, which had no power or say in Iraq.

The GC had no power, but had rotating presidents, who portrayed absolute disconnection from the people, and even from other members of the council.

Then came the first Iraqi government in post-invasion Iraq, when Ayad Allawi was appointed Prime Minister by Paul Bremer. Allawi was disconnected from his cabinet. Many ministers learned about government decisions from the media and had no say in making them. There was no consensus over the issues.

Allawi acted as if he was the one who knew everything and everyone else was misled, which made sense if we knew that he had to protect himself and his government from everyone else.

Later, things did not get better with PM Ibrahim al-Jaafari, and definitely not with Nouri al-Maliki.

Therefore, it is only normal, if not expected, that there is a deadlock each time the same players try to form a government. They all want to be PM because that title is the real power. They all believe they have the right to rule because they “suffered” during the years of opposition, when they lived comfortably in Europe, USA, Syria and Iran. They wanted to get paid for the suffering they caused their distant family members whom they left behind in Iraq.

And they all know if they are not the PM, they won’t get paid.

But, if power-sharing was the main principle of running a government in Iraq, there won’t be a problem over who heads it.

Unfortunately, when Iraq finally sees a new government seated, it won’t be able to do much, just like the former governments. The “losers” will tirelessly be in the way of progress to prove that they were right. And their representatives in the parliament will be the tools.

Remarkable Change

2010-09-06T11:59:00.014-04:00

The Iraqi parliamentary elections in March resulted in remarkable turning points, in the political scene and in the way Iraqis understood the necessity of elections and executed them.

In the past, the main motivation for electing representatives to the parliament was the sectarian and ethnic background of candidates. We saw that translated in the two previous elections. Even when the voter did not know the candidate, that did not deter the voter from voting for them because they belonged to a certain group.

The role of Shiite Hawza and the Sunni scholars was remarkable in the past too. When Hawza indirectly advocated for candidates on the right side of the religious spectrum, that meant guaranteed votes. And when Sunni scholars urged Sunnis to boycott the elections, boycott they got.

But in March most Iraqis defied all odds and marched in a different direction, (except for most of the Kurds who still voted based on ethnic background, but there were several reasons for that; one of them is the “fantastic” job their representatives are doing in Baghdad and hence well thought vote.)

Many Iraqis crossed the sectarian lines and dove right into a marvelous practice we call democracy. They voted for their candidates.

Although religious-political groups used, again, pictures and sayings from revered religious figures to advocate for a strong Islamic influence in the next government, Ayad Allawi, the secular, won the highest number of seats in the parliament.

That was a turning point, on that we thought was going to take generations to happen. It’s a proof that Iraqis started to understand the imported slogans of democracy and freedom. They understand that Iraq will never be stable with a religious government, and voted accordingly.

The other remarkable shift came from the politicians themselves. Over the past six months, talks to form a government have failed, because Nouri al-Maliki insists on staying in the Prime Minister, even though everyone else is saying “no”, and is indirectly threatening unrest if the parliament chose otherwise.

Maliki, as many know, is Iran's current favorite. And Iran made that clear more than once. But even the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) has rejected that.

I’m saying “even the ISCI…” because that’s a group that born in Iran, funded and raised by Iran. Even its armed wing, the Badr troops, have been trained by al-Quds Forces, Iran’s most feared militia. They fought on Iran’s side in the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

But that did not fly when it came to choosing a new Iraqi PM. ISCI representatives publically said that they would side with Allawi against Maliki.

Now, that’s a huge development, one that the international community must take advantage of.

For the first time in seven years the US administration is presented with a chance to show the one example of success in the war against dictatorship and terrorism and help seat a secular, western-educated and lovable character in power.

With Allawi in power, the US would have helped the Iraqis taste the fruits of their democratic practice, open new page of relations with Arab countries and leaders, who have shown vast support for an Iraqi government led by Allawi. Allawi is a man capable of saying “Middle East, this is what you get when you allow your people to choose.”

Plus a bonus; the US would have directed a big blow to Iran’s plan and influence in the Middle East.

Unfortunately, the US administration is once again going the opposite direction. They are pressuring Iraqi politicians to accept Maliki as a Prime Minister!

Note: I did not intend for this post to be campaigning for Ayad Allawi. I did not vote for him. But I was analyzing the situation in Iraq based on the facts.

New Candidate for PM

2010-09-05T09:53:00.004-04:00

I’ve graduated from school in California, moved to Washington DC, started oil painting, moved to Maryland, moved back to DC and got married.

And I find myself writing about the mess in Iraq again!

It’s been two years since I posted here last time, and the hot topic is still how Iraqi politicians cannot make up their minds and steer the ship away from the storm.

The new development in the political arena in Iraq is that there is yet one more candidate for the Prime Minister seat. As if we didn’t have enough complications.

Adel Abdul Madhdi, Iraqi vice president, is added to the line with Nouri al-Maliki and Ayad Allawi.

Now, when you know that most many Iraqis will reject Abdul Mahdi as a Prime minister because his party did not win enough seats in the parliament to qualify for the PM seat; and

almost no one wants Maliki re-elected; and

there is a strong Iranian objection on seating Allawi, hence he’s got a tough chance to actually be the PM (although he won highest number of votes in the parliamentary elections); and

when you know that there is actually another candidate barking in the background, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who is not likely to be a Prime Minister again;

Well… first you will be confused, then you will realize that Iraq doesn’t really have a real candidate. Iraqi politician are circling around a very tough obstacle, one that needs generations to overcome. It is the sectarian and ideological divisions amongst the decision makers. Everyone has enough weapons to give his party the veto privilege.

How is it going to be solved?

Well, like every time… by US “experts in the Middle East” forcing a name on the parties. And like every time, no one will cooperate with the PM because they did not want him in that seat.

What do average Iraqis get? Well, promises to improve electricity… until next elections when they get more promises to improve electricity!

It's Our Iraq, We Know More!

2008-04-15T13:41:00.002-04:00

A while ago, when the Turkish troops were bombing northern Iraq in their effort to root out the Kurdish anti-Turkish government, PKK, and when the Iraqi gang, including the Kurdish leaders, were silent about the attacks that killed dozens of innocent Iraqis, I wrote an entry telling the readers my own analysis of the situation. In the entry, I said that the whole issue is a behind-closed-doors deal with the Turks, Americans and Iraqis to solve several issues. The issues, as I saw them, were: Iraqi Kurdish side: the Oil Law, which was opposed by the Iraqi political gangs; the issue of Kirkuk, which was delayed over and over again by the Iraqi gang; the issue of Kurdistan’s share of Iraq’s revenues, which the Kurds wanted it to be 17% and the Iraqi gang only offered 14%; and the salaries of the pes merga, the Kurdish security forces.

In my entry, I said that in order for the Americans, who label the PKK “terrorist group, and the Turks, who consider the PKK a dangerous political rival, to get rid of the PKK, they needed the Iraqi Kurds to allow the attacks. The deal was, I thought, that the Kurdistan government will be silent and only verbally “condemn the offensive actions” in northern Iraq as long as the Americans help the Kurds to solve the issues above with the Iraqi government.

Now, here is the news:

Yesterday, the Iraqi gang, headed of course by Dawa party and SIIC, signed on the Oil Law, as was proposed at the beginning with no amendments, even though the Iraqi parliament amended several articles and did not agree on the first draft. [that shows how much effective and respected the Iraqi parliament is!] The law gives the Kurdistan government total control of the oil wells and refineries in Kurdistan.

The Iraqi gang also signed an agreement that tasks the Iraqi Ministry of Defense with paying the salaries of the pesh merga, which number about 200,000.

The Iraqi gang also signed an agreement to put a new timeframe for Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution, which deals with the city of Kirkuk and its future. The UN will be supervising the process.

Now you believe that Iraqis who have lived in Iraq all there lives and struggled through the baathist regime and suffered and lived through three wars, an invasion and fatal sanctions and survived, know much much more about Iraqi politics and the former “opposition” leaders and their interests than anyone else on the planet?

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

The Blog is Back!

2008-04-10T02:19:00.001-04:00

Dear readers,
The blog is back! But this is a temporary site until I get my own website up and running, soon.

Here is the entry that I tried to post last week and I couldn’t:

THE GAME of “Iraq politics” started to irritate me, and millions of other Iraqis. Every day we realize more that what Iraq has turned into is not worth the sacrifice we’ve paid in the last five years. One of the results of that, unfortunately, is that now Iraqis compare Iraq under the dictator Saddam Hussein to the Iraqi they live in now, and believe that under Hussein the situation was much better.

But as one of them, I understand where the Iraqis come from when they make such comparison and conclusion. What the country has turned into after the invasion in 2003 gives the average Iraqi no space to think about he benefits we’ve been given by just toppling Saddam Hussein. When they compare the number of enemies and criminals in the streets now, and the number of threats they face these days to the one enemy they had under Hussein, which is the government itself, they realize that it was easier to survive under the former dictatorship than now. At least they knew the redlines and they tried not to cross them into the danger. But now, there are no redlines. Everyone is a target and for no reason. Just a target.

From a country with unified borders and security forces that protected everyone, except the government’s opposition, to lawless territories where no one is safe, not even inside their houses. From a country where the education system was deteriorating, but still produced students who are now acing their way through the world’s best universities, including American universities, to a land where just being a student makes you a target.

Sunni areas are dangerous for Shiites, and vice versa. We don’t have Iraqi provinces now. Instead, we have Shiite territories and Sunni territories. And in Baghdad, Diyala and Kirkuk, the only provinces where populations of different backgrounds still exist, they don’t live together; there are different neighborhoods for different sects and ethnicities. In Baghdad, they are separated by “separation walls.”

All this was done without even asking the Iraqis themselves. Maybe they would have agreed on the separation, maybe not. But the average Iraqis weren’t asked.

And to make it worse, two parliament members proposed to separate Sadr city and make it a province by itself.

And the Maliki government is still in power!

I believe what is happening in and to Iraq is because the lack of politics. We don’t have politicians in the country. The decision makers in Iraq now [and by “decision makers” I mean the people who stir things up and launch campaigns to kill Iraqis and terrify the rest to control the country] are Nouri al-Maliki, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, Adnan al-Dulaimi and Muqtada al-Sadr. None of them is a politician, or has any amount of experience in politics or international relations. None of them has a network of advisors beyond their relations with Iran, or tribal traditions and power. They’ve kidnapped Iraq. None of them has friends in the international community and therefore, we see them acting alone and are backed by no one, but Bush, who, ironically, is exactly like them [has no political experience or international experience prior to being president.]

Those people are holding Iraq hostage. A country led by Quran interpretations [and they are many and they differ] will never have the chance to stand on its feet.

A 1000 Iraqi security forces members, including high ranking officers, refused to participate in the military operations against the Mehdi Army in Basra last week. To deal with this, Maliki went to Shiite tribes, whose leaders support his terrorist Dawa party, and asked them for back up. He included 10,000 Shiite militia members in the Iraqi security forces in the last two weeks. What does that mean?

Maliki is forming a shield of armed supporters around him and his terrorist party. He is preparing to take over Iraq and run it alone.

This is exactly what Saddam Hussein did when the Baath party took power in 1968. He assassinated a few of his enemies in the party and then, with family members and supporters from his clan, he formed Jihaz Hunein, which was the equivalent of the criminal Badr organization now. Jihaz Hunein was responsible for the assassinations of everyone that disagreed with the Baath party ideologies. And that was the beginning of the Saddam Hussein era.

Am I the only one whose seeing this?!

News from Iraqi Newspapers

2008-03-25T20:17:00.005-04:00

Iraqi newspapers had some in-detail news stories today that I thought worth looking into. Unfortunately, the news go along with what I, and other Iraqis, expected to happen in Iraq in the next few months.

Heavy clashes erupted today between Iraqi security forces and al-Mahdi army in Basra, biggest city in southern Iraq. More than 5 killed so far and 18 wounded.

In Baghdad, eyewitnesses said that Mehdi army members planted IEDs around Sadr city, their haven, to prevent the US and Iraqi forces from entering the city. Also, Mehdi army members used mortars and small arms fire to attack several police stations in Kasra W Atash, Ur neighborhood, Orfely neighborhood and othe neighborhoods around Sadr city. They also attacked offices of fellow Shiite groups like Badr Organization and Dawa Party in and around Sadr city.

Sadr announced “civil” disobedience in Baghdad and Basra today. In Baghdad, Mehdi army members controlled the streets in western Baghdad and blocked the roads, they threatened to arrest anyone goes to school, work or the market. They paralyzed the western side of Baghdad today.

In Basra, the city was described as empty but from the Shiite militias and Iraqi security forces today. Clashes in the streets and people stayed home, fearing to get caught in the mayhem. Dead bodies were seen in the streets, but no one dared to pick them up. Eyewitnesses said that armed men control much of the city now, positioned on the roofs of many houses and shooting at anyone they see in the streets.

Munjid Salahudeen Ritha, the director of the Baghdad morgue, said that the number of bodies found dead in Baghdad has been increasing in the last 15 days. “The morgue receives 15 bodies per day now,” he said.

“The surge is successful.” !!!

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

Note: Ali has published a new post.

What Will Happen in Iraq in the Next Few Months?

2008-03-16T00:43:00.003-04:00

Of course we hear very little about the increasing violence in Iraq in the last few weeks. If we think about it, it makes sense that the US media is not interested in reporting this increase because, the way I see it, the phase now is to lobby and advocate for the US presidential candidates. Each one of them has a “brilliant” strategy to save American troops, but all of them are talking about withdrawing troops from Iraq at some point, and that point does not even mention the Iraqis themselves, who are in dire need for the troops now, and in the coming few months.

But this is not the point that I want to make in this post. My point is the increase of violence.

Car bombs are killing dozens of Iraqis every day. Kidnappings are back to the daily life [as we expected] mutilated bodies are back in the streets, Kurdistan is now under threats of car bombs like the one in Sulaimaniya a few days ago [and I expect more car bombs in the Kurdish region in the coming few months,] statements from Muqtada al-Sadr are back threatening to start another phase in the ongoing civil war in Iraq and the Sunnis in Anbar are openly threatening to rise against the government again [the Council of Anbar Province has put a deadline to meet its demands and the deadline is tomorrow!]

Several days ago, Shiite militias in Kut in southern Iraq carried their guns and started to fight US troops and Iraqi security forces. It is an ongoing fighting and all the sides are losing casualties every day.

And the Nouri al-Maliki regime announced today that it will hold yet another “national reconciliation conference” on Tuesday. The conference will “work to build the state of law,” said a statement by Maliki’s press office. The statement also said that the Maliki regime believes that “it is an equal right for everyone to participate in the political process.”

To show the Maliki regime really believe in what it said in the statement, four days ago Maliki’s office announced that to overcome the shortage in the number of ministers in the cabinet after several of ministers withdrew months ago, the regime decided to replace some of the withdrawn ministers by appointing people without going back to the parliament and shrink the cabinet. [last year, 18 ministers from the Sadr, Allawi and Sunni groups suspended their participation in the cabinet, including the Justice, Health, education and higher Education. The Maliki cabinet total 41 ministers.]

Background:
Muqtada al-Sadr announced a truce with the Maliki regime six or eight moths ago. Sadr ordered his criminals to stop shedding the blood of innocent Iraqis for a while, until his demands were met. His announced demands included: a timetable for foreign troops withdrawal from Iraq, start the reconstruction process and facilitate the return of the Iraqi displaced and refugee populations and secure their areas and an end to the federalization project.

Several months ago, the Sunni group, Tawafuk Front, suspended its participation in the cabinet and put a few demands for the government to meet before they can participate in the government again. Their announced demands included: suspension of the debaathification decree and the return of qualified Iraqi's to their jobs to help run the falling state, the release of “innocent Iraqis” who are in US military or Iraqi regime prisons, facilitate the return of the Iraqi displaced and refugee populations and secure their areas, an end to the federalization project and more involvement in the planning and execution of security operations.

Ayad Allawi’s group, the Iraqi National Accord, suspended its participation in the government several months ago because, they said, they did not want to be part of the “sectarian political process” in the country. They demanded a “real national reconciliation,” facilitate the return of the Iraqi displaced and refugee populations and secure their areas and an end to the intervention of Iran in Iraq’s internal and external affairs.

The Kurds demanded a solution for the issue of Kirkuk. According to the constitution, a referendum should have been held in December to decide whether the residents of the city want their city to be part of Kurdistan or not. But the MAliki regime keeps ignoring the issue. Also, they asked the regime to sign the Oil Law, or find another one, and the regime is ignoring the issue too.

The Bush administration has started, although to little too late, an effort to bring to the table leaders of the so called “Iraqi resistance” and former high ranking baathists to try to quell the violence. The US military also held talks with members of the opposition against the Maliki regime to try to compromise and find ways to include them in the decision making process. the US military was also trying to find ways to convince the Maliki regime to start taking charge of the process to bring back the displaced Iraqis to their homes.

And the US military succeeded to turn many Sunnis against al-Qaeda and recruited them to fight side by side with US troops and root out hundreds of insurgents and militias. For the first time in years, the Iraqis felt like they are fighting for their country back, not against each other.

What was Maliki’s response?

It authorized more and more raids on houses in the Sadr city and in Najaf, in which hundreds of Sadr followers [innocent and involved in violence] were arrested, and are still in prison with no charges or hope for release.

It authorized more and more raids on Sunni areas and provinces, in which hundreds of Sunnis [innocent and involved in violence] were arrested, and are still in prison with no charges or hope for release.

It integrated 18000 more Shiite militia members in the Iraqi security forces and ignited serious concerns in the Iraqi community because people are afraid that more criminals were brought into the security forces to help in the ongoing ethnic and sectarian cleansing.

It refused to integrate Sunni Awakening Council members, number more than 80,000, in the Iraqi security forces and refused to pay their salaries and arrested many of them [the excuse was that they belong to insurgents groups.]

Representatives from the Maliki regime visited several neighboring and regional countries and struck deals with them to force out the Iraqi refugees [because it is a political suicide for the regime to allow millions of Iraqis to leave the country. The world will start to ask: why are they leaving if everything is going right in Iraq?] And the regime sent buses to bring back the refugees for free and promised them $800 per family to help them get started again. But when the refugees arrived, they found themselves homeless because their houses were broken into by militias and insurgents. They couldn’t go back to their houses, the Maliki regime cannot help them or secure their houses, and now they are displaced within their country. And the $800 was a lie!

The Maliki regime passed an amendment to the debaathification decree, only it was not amended and nothing was changed but a few words, in which I believe they used a thesaurus to mean the same old thing!

Maliki invited Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Iraq and signed dozens of security and economy treaties and contracts with him, when most of the Iraqis don’t want Iran to be involved in anything in Iraq!

The Maliki regime announced that it is going to shrink the cabinet to deal with the issue of the missing ministers!

That means: The demands of the participating political groups in Iraq are not being discussed, compromised or met. And that means that the reasons why those groups agreed to sit around one table and negotiate in the first place is missing. Why should Sadr continue the truce? Why should the Sunnis and Allawi’s group come back to the cabinet? Even if Sadr announced an extension to the truce, does that mean that, behind closed doors, he is not going to order his criminals to resume the violence, but why? What is he going to get if he helps to quell the violence? And even if the ministers went back to the cabinet, aren’t they still in disagreement with the Maliki regime, or at least their political groups are in total disagreement with the regime because their demands were ignored? How are they going to run the country if the disagree on everything?

And why should the refugees and displaced trust the regime?

In a few words: The Maliki regime is sabotaging every single effort the US administration and military are trying to organize in Iraq. And of course, it is sabotaging what the qualified Iraqis are trying to do to help the country.

And now when we want to predict what will happen in Iraq in the next few months, it will be easy:

The number of car bombs will increase not double, not triple, but seven or eight times. The number of beheaded and mutilated bodies will increase all over Iraq. The Kurds will get more violence in their region to keep the Kurds busy with violence and postpone the issues they are concerned about. Kirkuk will be the stage of a blood bath to force the Maliki regime to find a way to deal with the issue. The Awakening Councils will be targeted more and more in the next few months. And of course, the electricity, fuel and other infrastructure will always be missing.

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

Take a Right. Go Right!

2008-03-12T00:47:00.011-04:00

Staffan de Mistura, the UN representative in Iraq, met with Ali al-Sistani in Najaf yesterday and “discussed the political and security situation” in the country.

That did not surprise me, given that the international community is desperate and clueless on the Iraqi issue that everyone is trying to find a way out. But the news made me wonder: Why do they insist on doing exactly what the Iraqis are asking them not to do?

Is that how it came down to in Iraq? One of the richest countries in the world, absolutely the richest in history and civilization and until recently produced some of the world’s brightest scientists, doctors, engineers, professors and artists-- now is reduced to a shell of its former self and is led by a turbaned foreigner, whose interested in nothing but to get a fifth of each rich Shiite’s income every year?

Iraq now is formally led by someone whose mission in life is, and should always be, answering questions like: Is it necessary for a woman to compensate the prayers and fasts which she missed during menses?

Or Is it permissible to manufacture, sell, or buy musical instruments that are made for children’s play? And is it permissible for adults to use them?

Questions quoted from Sistani’s website. You can read more here.

That’s his job. Not to demean him or disrespect his knowledge, but that’s what the man is good for-- answering this kind of questions is all he is trained to do. And some people need someone like him in their life.

How is that possible? 25 million Iraqis, and we cannot find 10 qualified men and women to run the country! Or maybe someone is not looking in the right place?

Who is Sistani to come and tell me and my family what to do and who to vote for? As a religious man, I respect him and his background. But that’s about it. I wouldn’t go further and ask him about anything else. He did not study politics. He did not study economy. He did not study international relations, and definitely didn’t serve in the military. The man hasn’t left his house in years. How can he be reliable or qualified to answer questions about the situation in Iraq?

This man has damaged Iraq more than anyone else, or I should say as much as Harith al-Dhari has, by just being silent. How can I trust him on my country’s long awaited unity when he encourages people to disrespect each other?

Read this, which I found on his website:
Is it permissible to offer congregational prayers behind a Sunni prayer leader?

And instead of saying: of course. You are both Muslims. You are both Iraqis and you are brothers, which any respectful human being would say, this Mullah answered: It is permissible but you must recite Hamd and Sura yourself even though the recitation may be in low voice.

Which is to say: reciting Quran by the Sunnis doesn’t count. You should do it yourself. Is that the reply of a man who wants to quell the religious and ethnic conflict in Iraq?

And now, the UN comes to ask him for advice on how to proceed in Iraq! And Mistura said “this is the first visit and there will be other visits to discuss the situation with him and ask for advice.”

Iraqis are fed up with religious leaders, Sunnis and Shiites. We do not want them to meddle in our lives anymore. They can continue to advice on menstrual issues and pilgrimage, because that’s what they’ve studied and have been preaching. But that’s it. Nothing more.

I’ve said this over and over again in the last two years, but no one wants to believe an Iraqi talking about Iraq! But now, the New York Times has finally figured it out.

After almost five years of war, many young people in Iraq, exhausted by constant firsthand exposure to the violence of religious extremism, say they have grown disillusioned with religious leaders and skeptical of the faith that they preach.

Why does the international community keep going against the Iraqis’ will? Why do we have to keep yelling “take a right. Take right. We’ll be lost if you don’t.” And the person behind the wheel insists on going left?

Why does the US and the UN keep involving religious figures, and not even the moderate ones, in the political process in Iraq? Who is advising them, if any?

Sistani and Dhari, and people like them, have never and will never be the solution for Iraq. How many times do we have to repeat this, and how many more Iraqis have to die, for the world to realize that we want qualified politicians, not turbaned snakes?

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

And They Still Call It A Government!

2008-02-26T14:49:00.005-05:00

It’s been several days since the Turkish forces launched their big military operation in northern Iraq to rout out the Kurdish separatists, the PKK. And I have yet to see a serious reaction from the Iraqi government, or at least from the Kurdish forces.

Nouri al-Maliki “condemned” the Turkish attacks. The Kurdish leaders’ statements were came a little short of vowing to defend their territories. And the US administration, which is, in the eyes of Iraqis, responsible for protecting the average Iraqis, only said “We urged the Turkish government to limit their operations to precise targeting of the PKK; to limit the scope and duration of their operations.”

That left me to wonder: why is it so casual that Turkey is invading Iraqi lands, attacking its territories and as a result forcing out hundreds of Iraqi families out of their homes and turn them into homeless population?

We don’t have a real government in Iraq. So, when the Turkish government informed the Iraqi gang about the military operation beforehand, the Iraqi gang did not try to secure a safe place for the displaced, which doesn’t surprise me!

It is unreasonable that the Iraqi government is not taking all necessary steps to stop the Turkish attacks. If the government is not protecting its people from terrorist attacks around Iraq, is not providing jobs for Iraqis, is not rebuilding the country, is not giving financial support for widows and orphans, is not improving, or for that matter recreating the infrastructure in the country, is not housing the homeless returnees after they were forced out of Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, is not bringing hope back in Iraq, WHY IS IT STILL IN POWER?

And the Kurds. They have the pesh merga. Where is the pesh merga? Why aren’t they defending Kurdistan? I find it very appalling that their territories are invaded and attacked and they don’t try to defend it. In any country in the world, unless it’s Iraq in spring 2003, if an invader attacks, people are legally allowed, and are supposed to defend their lands. Why is the Kurdish government so quite about this and only “promise to defend ourselves if this continues,” when we know very well that the Kurds have no good relations and don’t trust the Turkish government?

I had to go deeper with this issue. And this is what I came with:

The Kurdish leaders want a separate Kurdistan state eventually. Of course they cannot achieve this separation without the American blessings. The current Iraqi gang, represented by the Shiite turbaned snakes and the Iraqi Islamic party, only disagree with the Kurds in public. But in fact they don’t care whether Iraq is one state or three or four, as long as their bank accounts are fed regularly. [I hope this fact doesn’t require a new evidence by now!]

The PKK is based in Kurdistan. It is internationally labeled a “terrorist” group and the United States wants to eliminate its threat because of that. Turkey on the other hand wants to eliminate the PKK because it’s considered the government’s main political rival, and like in any Middle Eastern government, rivals should be executed.

The Kurdish leaders have long used the PKK as a Joker card in their relations with Turkey. It is there when the Turkish government decides to mess with the Kurdish region in Iraq, militarily or economically. Because the PKK is hosted in Kurdistan, they are in debt to the Kurdish government. The Kurdish leaders can easily unleash the PKK operators to disturb Turkey, even if for a short period of time.

Therefore, I think the deal was as follows:

The Turkish government wants to get rid of its rivals, the PKK. Of course they cannot do that without a permission from the US administration. So, the Turkish leaders waved the pressure card; the US bases in Turkey. Turkey promised to not raise the issue of these bases, or how long they will be there, as long as the Turkish forces are allowed into Iraq to fight the PKK. PKK, labeled “terrorist” group by the US. So, it is a mutual interest to end its power.

The Kurdish government, represented by Jalal Talbani and Masoud Barzani, is very upset with the Shiites and the Sunnis in the Iraqi gang over two main issues: 1- city of Kirkuk and 2- the share of Kurdistan region in Iraq’s budget, which the Kurds say should be 17% plus the salaries of the pesh merga and the Iraqi gang says it should be 14% and the pesh merga salaries should be included. And these two issues have been on the table since mid 2003, which means they’ll never reach a compromise on them. So, they want to start the process of separation earlier. Who is going to prevent them!

So, it came down to this:

- The US promised the Kurds to put pressure on the Iraqi gang to give Kurdistan the 17% of Iraq’s annual budget plus enough cash to pay the pesh merga.
- The Turkish government promised the US to stop negative intervention in the region Kurdistan if the US opened the Iraqi borders for the Turkish troops to invade Iraq. The US on the other hand promised more help and support with Turkey’s the European Union issue if Turkey helped eliminate the terrorist group.
- Barzani and Talbani will be quiet on the invasion and only “condemn” until the Turkish military operation is over.

One thing the Kurdish government in Iraq did not think through: Turkey will never let the Kurds have their own separate state. They’ve never done, and they will never do.

PS: Ali has a new post.

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

Shoo Them Away!

2008-01-25T17:38:00.000-05:00

A delegation from The Arab League, headed by its Deputy Secretary General Ahmed Ben Hili, was scheduled to arrive to Baghdad next week to hold talks with the leading political groups in Iraq and try to find a way to free them from the bottleneck they put themselves into. But Nouri al-Maliki suddenly asked them to postpone the visit, without giving them an alternative timetable.

Ali al-Dabbagh, spokesman of the Iraqi government, said that the reason for the postponement was to “give Maliki and the political groups enough time to prepare for the talks,” which I thought is a very good answer, except that it is a big fat lie!

We have to realize that this visit has been in the planning for almost a year now, since Iraq, Syria, Iran and the United States held their talks in Iraq last February. At the time, the Arab League wanted a bigger role in Iraq’s political process and they offered to go to Iraq and help the political groups to “reconcile.”

It is a very good idea “give Maliki and the political groups enough time to prepare.” And then I ran the names of the Iraqi political groups that are big enough to hold talks and got these names: Dawa Party, Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, Iraqi Accordance Front, Sadr Trend, Iraqi National Accord, Fadhila Party, Kurdistan Democratic Party, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

Then I thought: wait a minute; the Iraqi political groups are the same groups in the Iraqi government, which is in power since early 2006. Haven’t they got enough time to “reconcile” already?

And, wait a minute; the Iraqi political groups not only have been in power since early 2006, but they’ve been the same political groups that were in power in the first Iraqi government, which was seated in early 2005. I thought three years were enough to “reconcile.”

Then I remembered: those Iraqi political groups were participants in Iyad Allawi’s government, which was seated in mid 2004. And at the time, they were all going around on TV stations and newspapers inside and outside Iraq talking about “the national unity government” and “reconciliation.”

I wasn’t upset with what I found because we already expected that. And by we, I mean the Iraqis who really understand the background and interests of the Iraqi political groups, and their sycophants.

But my mind didn’t stop there. It hit me hard when I thought: but these are the same groups that formed the Iraqi Governing Council. And before that, they were all “together in the struggle against Saddam Hussein Regime” and formed one opposition umbrella group in 1991 called The Iraqi National Congress.

Technically, the current Iraqi political groups had 18 years to reconcile, and yet they haven’t. What does that tell you?

I guess the Bush administration should have asked me about the opposition groups, I would have said: Well, think about it this way: the Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmed Chalabi, failed and everyone of the groups took off and formed their own fronts. That’s probably not a good sign!

If I knew that, and I was in my teens, how could the Bush administration “geniuses” not notice that?

I say it again and again: this Maliki government is nothing but a sectarian tool that is trying, and unfortunately succeeding, in splitting Iraq into ugly extreme Islamic pockets, labeling it “Shiite, Sunni” and into a hideous ethnic regions.

This government has not done anything that we as Iraqis can point at and say “this is better for us.” Nothing, And I dare anyone in the government to come out and give me one example of something done for the sake of Iraqis.

Maliki’s gang is not interested at all in Iraq, unless we consider destroying its heritage and future an interest. And what pains me, and most Iraqis, is that no one of the respected political groups is trying to do anything about it.

I left Iraq 18 months ago and when I left, the situation was like this: no electricity, no water, no trash collectors and so on. The situation now is much much worse because it’s 18 months later and there are no annual renovations for the streets or the infrastructure, and the insurgency and militias are still free.

Here is evidence from someone living in Baghdad now:

It has been more than three weeks since we have had any power from the national grid at our house. We don’t consider it that much of a difference because even in "normal'' times we get just one hour of power during the day and another hour at night. We don’t bother anymore to ask about the reasons behind this or when the electricity might be fixed and come back.

How many Iraqis are living like this now? And the government is not even bothering with listening to the average Iraqis. They are busy taking stars off the Iraqi flag and lying about what they represented. They are busy applying on the ground the Iranian Mullahs plan for Iraq, because they only have one more year to go and after that the Iraqis will hold new elections and shoo the black-turbaned and the white-turbaned Mullahs and away once and for ever.

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

NOTE: Ali has published a new post.

Just For... Iran!

2008-01-08T17:44:00.000-05:00

Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq’s Prime Minister, “postponed” the official celebration of the Iraqi Army 86th anniversary, which was January 6th, for “security reasons,” his office said!

I am thinking: Aren’t you, Maliki, the one who has been talking about how “safe and secured” Baghdad has been for the last two months or so? Didn’t your government announced that it was “very safe and security has been maintained” in Baghdad, where the celebration of the Iraqi Army was supposed to be held, and advised the Iraqi refugees to “return to their homes?”

What changed in the last week?

Maliki, wasn’t your government’s mouthpiece, al-Iraqiya TV, air the celebrations of Christmas and New Year’s from “every part of Baghdad and in the streets?”

If the average Iraqis celebrated Christmas and New Year’s in the streets and enjoyed “the achieved security,” like what your propaganda team told the world, why couldn’t you hold the celebration of the Iraqi Army anniversary inside your fortified Green Zone, where it was supposed to take place?

What kind of “security threats” were you thinking about when you asked your press office to write the statement to postpone the celebration? What kind of threats do you have to face in the Green Zone?

I am going to tell you, Maliki, and tell your government and the 275 “parliamentarians”:

The Iraqi Army fought eight years war with Iran. The Iraqi Army killed at least 500,000 Iranians in the 1980s, according to UN statistics. How can you allow the Iraqis to be proud of their army, which defended Iraq against all the threats since 1921? How can you allow that, when it is the same army that failed your Mullahs plans?

The first thing Ibrahim al-Jaafari, you predecessor, did when he was seated was to issue the order to take down one of Iraq’s most beautiful and important monuments, the Martyr Day monument in Palestine Street. That monument depicted the criminal act of the Iranians committed against the Iraqi Prisoners of War in the early 1980s, when they brutally murdered them and mutilated their bodies.

Why did Jaafari issue orders to take that monument down? The Iraqi Army wasn’t Saddam Hussein’s, it was Iraq’s army. And those who were killed by Iranians in that brutal and criminal act were Iraqis and should be immortalized, like it or not.

And what did Jaafari’s government put to replace the monument? A Picture of Muqtada al-Sadr’s father!

What did you do, Maliki, when you first came to power? You issued the orders to take down the Crossed Swords Monument, which is one of Iraq’s most famous and celebrated monuments that depicted the victory of the Iraqi Army against the Iranian Army.

Why did you take the monument down? Was it hurting anybody? It is inside the Green Zone anyway. Why did you take it down? Is it because it was hurting your Iranian breadwinners?

Even if you say “the monument was Saddam Hussein’s delusional victory.” I would say: So? The Iraqis liked it because it is a piece of art that was never repeated anywhere in the world.

If you, Maliki, or one of your government puppets, say “well, we don’t want to have bad relations with our neighbor, Iran, and these monuments remind everybody of the bloody war Saddam Hussein launched against Iran, I will ask you: Did the Iranians take down their monuments from the 1980s period, which depict their war with Iraq?

Every piece of art in Baghdad is going to be taken down, and pictures of turbaned dead men will replace them. The Iraqi art, one of the world’s oldest and most celebrated civilizations, is being replaced with turbans and bearded men.

This is what the Iraqi government is doing now; erase what is left of Iraq’s civilization and history. If anyone goes to Baghdad now, they will never believe that this is the city where civilization started. If you go to Iraq, you would never think that this is the country that is called “cradle of civilization” because you will find nothing but black Abayas and pictures of bearded men in the streets, just like Iran during the time of Khomeini.

This is the new Iraq: A government that has no credibility in the international community and has no friends but the Iranian government, which is committed to destroying what is left of Iraq.

There are more than four million Iraqi refugees outside Iraq, more than two million Iraqis displaced within Iraq, the Kurdish government is totally separate from the central government, the central government has no power to prevent the Kurds from investing in the northern oil wells [which to me is a good thing,] the government has no power to control criminals, insurgents and militias, the government is not taking care of those who were forced to return to Baghdad from Syria and are homeless now, non of the government officials leaves the Green Zone unless in a helicopter, NOT ONE street in Baghdad was paved or renovated since 2002 and early 2003, NOT ONE water plan was renovated since before the invasion. When it rains, Baghdad floods. The ministry of Health is importing suspicious medicines and there is a scandal every week. The ministry of Interior is very corrupt that no one has the ability to start investigating. The ministry of Culture does basically nothing, but it still exists. The ministry of Trade is decreasing the amount of food given to people based on the food stamps and no one is even noticing it. The ministry of Electricity is… well it exists for no reason. The ministry of Oil is exporting oil for five years now, but where is the money? And so on…

What is this government doing there!

But this will not last for longer. Maliki’s plan, and that of the turbaned snakes and poisonous Mullahs in Iraq, Shiite and Sunni, will not succeed. The Iraqis are realizing gradually the mistake they’ve done when they voted for Ali al-Sistani and Harith al-Dhari. They know now that because of their miscalculated vote, Iraq has moved backwards a 100 years.

Islamists will never be able to govern a stable Iraq, nor will Christians. Iraq is a mix of different ethnic and religious backgrounds and it is impossible to compromise, and Iraq is now the evidence. What have we achieved since the Islamists took power in Iraq? Blood baths, men cannot wear shorts even when they play tennis! Women cannot drive or use cell phones in the streets. Women have to wear head scarves, women cannot wear pants, women have to wear Abayas, men cannot walk in the streets with women unless they are relatives, men cannot drink alcohol, university students cannot hold parties and cannot organize trips or picnics. Girls have to wear head scarves inside campuses.

And when I say the truth about Ali al- Sistani and Harith al-Dhari, people call me “sectarian!”

Nothing of what we’ve got from Islamists is useful. Show me one useful thing the turbaned snakes and poisonous Mullahs have given Iraq.

And if you don’t find any, then the question is: Why do we have them in power? And why don’t you like it when I attack them, by logic and evidences?

It's Not Going To Work With Maliki's Kind in Power!

2007-12-22T17:14:00.000-05:00

The Nouri al-Maliki government is still insistent on not allowing the Sunnis to take a role in Iraq’s future. The issue of the Awakening councils is one more evidence on that.

Although the Bush administration is pushing Maliki and his backup groups of turbaned snakes, including Ali al-Sistani, to allow members of the Awakening councils into the Iraqi forces, the Shiite Iraqi government is not making any progress on the issue. Maliki offered to include only 20% of the over 70,000 Sunnis in the Iraqi armed forces and try to “train” the rest to join the public sector.

Why only 20%? Why Ibrahim al-Jaafari in 2005 and Maliki after him included every single Shiite militia member in the Iraqi army and police, and now only 20% of the Sunni Awakening councils will be allowed?

More than a year ago, I wrote a post about how important it is to start the talks with those who call themselves “Iraqi resistance” and said that if you negotiate with the Shiite militias like Bard troops, al-Mehdi army and Fadhila party militias, you have to negotiate with the Iraqi Sunni insurgents too. Otherwise, you will have a country run by Shiite militias, who are fought by Sunni insurgents, and security will never see the way to Iraq.

A year later, as usual, the Bush administration realized that the best way to bring stability to Iraq is by including the Sunnis in its future. Although it was at least two years late, it was a good late start.

We have to understand that if we want stability in Iraq, we have to talk to the Sunnis and try to find a compromise with them. We talked to the Kurds and Shiites and gave them what they wanted, didn’t we?

For so long, Harith al-Dhari and al-Qaeda in Iraq have controlled the Sunni youth and directed them to destroy Iraq and its future. And because the elected governments in Iraq after the invasion were both controlled by traumatized Shiite clergies and influence from Iran, some Sunnis thought the best way to change the future is by fighting against the government, which proved wrong and in the interest of everyone but the Iraqis themselves.

Finally, those deceived Sunnis are back to Iraq [metaphorically speaking] they now realize that Harith al-Dhari is nothing but a criminal who is whining over what he lost after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Most of the Sunnis in Iraq realized, although very late, that while Harith al-Dhari, his son and their henchmen are enjoying their life in Jordan, Egypt and UAE, the average Iraqis are being killed every day just to feed Dhari’s bank accounts. While the Dhari gang is living in luxury outside Iraq, the average Iraqis are living in poverty and danger. That’s what the Sunnis in Baghdad realize now, and that’s where the word Sahwa, or Awakening, came from. They are awake now.

Finally the Sunnis, who were involved in the fight against the U.S. troops and Iraqi government, are fighting Iraq’s real enemy: Harith al-Dhari gang and al-Qaeda.

But Nouri al-Maliki doesn’t want to include them in the Iraqi forces. Why?

See, Maliki’s plan, and of course it is the plan of the traumatized Shiites inside the decision making circle, is to Shiitize the Iraqi political arena, or make it Shiite, and they succeeded in doing that, but they failed to create a state.

The Iraqi Shiites have lost their best chance to prove to the world that they can run a country without turning it into an Islamic theology that negatively affects its relations with the outside world. They were given the chance to prove that not every Shiite regime should be another Iran, or another Hezbollah, but they failed. The average Iraqi Shiites trusted the Shiite “leaders” and thought they will be the way ahead. What they did not put into considerations is: who are those “leaders?”

Hakim? Iran’s weapon against Iraqis and the one who supervised the torture of the Iraqi soldiers in the 1980s? The one who wants to cut a big chunk of Iraq’s map so he can control its oil? The one who came to Iraq calling for the Shiites’ rights and four years later the Shiites are still waiting for the change?

Or Ibrahim al-Jaafari? What did the average Iraqi Shiites get during the time when Jaafari was Prime Minister?

Or maybe Sistani? The Mullah who refused to go to Mecca to meet with other Iraqi religious authorities, Sunnis and Shiites, to publicly denounce the killing of Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq? he refused to go to Mecca, which is the holiest Muslim city in the world and refused to participate in the most noble and important campaign: to stop the bloodshed in Iraq! [all other Sunni and Shiite religious leaders participated or sent representatives.]

Or maybe Fadhila party? The party that is now the reason why Basra is not a stable city and the party that fought with other Shiites over the control of oil in the south.

Or Muqtada al-Sadr? Well, I need to say no more. His name is enough to prove the idea is wrong.

And the list goes on and on.

Therefore, what we’ve got is this:

A government that sent a clear message to all Iraqis: We speak for the Shiites in Iraq, even if they don’t like it. We came back to Iraq and we have people to run the country. Therefore, except for the Kurds, no one else has the right to participate in power, not even the Shiites.

So, the Sunnis decided to fight against the Shiite government [and the U.S. troops because they protected the government.] Then al-Qaeda found its best chance in this gap in Iraq and recruited more and more insurgents.

The Shiite militias, financed and baked by the Iraqi government and Ali al-Sistani, worked on the sectarian cleansing of Baghdad, and the Sunni insurgents started to react by killing more innocent Shiites. Christians were included in the equation and were forced out of the city. They both succeeded, the Sunnis insurgents and the Shiite militias because more and more Sunnis left Baghdad and more and more educated Shiites left too.

The militias then worked on the second part of the plan: replacing those who left with new residents. So, they brought the uneducated, uncivilized criminals and members of the militias and housed them in the empty houses in Baghdad. Of course, Maliki’s government was aware of this and did not protect people’s properties, although Iraqis and international organizations warned of this. Therefore, the Maliki government was supporting this plan, if not the planner, I believe.

Now, we have a Baghdad that is full of uneducated people who have no jobs and most of them are either criminals or militia members or their families. And the original residents of Baghdad, who did not leave, stay in their houses fearing for their lives and don’t participate in public life.

Then, the government called for the displaced to return to Iraq, but return where? They came back and found their houses takes, their businesses destroyed and they have no place to go.

They changed the makeup of Baghdad and the results are not now, we will see the results in 10 or 15 years, when the new residents of Baghdad are supposed to take over and continue running the place. How are they going to do it with no qualifications? With no education and with no civilization?

The problem is that: Now there is no religious Shiite man or woman that is capable of loving Iraq as is, nor there is a Sunni, because they are all driven by their hate of the others. Shiite and Sunni politicians, who adapt Islam as their constitution, have brought Iraq nothing but devastation.

The Shiite religious government in Iraq now is afraid that if the Sunnis got power, they may rise again. I don’t find this fear as surprising because, as I said before, they are traumatized. They will make anything to insure that the Sunnis don’t get power in Iraq again, which is causing them a lot of backfire. The Sunnis will always be in Iraq and will always seek power. The best way to do it is to share, which is what they promised before they came to Iraq anyway!

And now, to insure Sunnis don't get power in Iraq, Maliki is making another mistake by not allowing the Awakening councils into the Iraqi security forces. It will definitely backfire on him and his government. But fortunately, the Bush administration is now convinced that the Sunnis should be given space in Iraq’s government. And with the pressure from the U.S., he will have to say yes. But here is what I think will happen:

The government will announce that members of the Awakening councils will be allowed into the Iraqi security forces. Then, the government will direct them to registration centers. Then, we will read stories about Awakening councils registration centers being blown up and attacked by car bombs and IEDs and suicide bombers. This will terrify the rest and there will be no Awakening councils members in the Iraqi security forces. And that will be another success for Nouri al-Maliki, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, Harith al-Dhari and Usama Bin Laden.

Therefore, I believe, and time will prove me right again, that whether it is a Shiite or a Sunni government, Iraq will be a failed state if it has an Islamic government. There is no choice for Iraqis but a secular government. A government where Sistani is nothing but a religious figure and limited to that, and Harith al-Dhari is nothing but a criminal and is serving his time in jail.

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

NOTE: Ali has posted a new entry.

Politics Talk!

2007-12-18T23:46:00.000-05:00

The Iraqi government is proving, once again, that it is everything but what the Bush administration hoped it would be. It is now sabotaging what the Americans have achieved and are trying to do to help improve the situation in Iraq:

After spending millions of dollars and months of strategy making and information gathering, the U.S. Army and Marines in Iraq succeeded to win the former insurgents to their sides [which is in fact the Iraqis side] and turned them against al-Qaeda and terrorists in Iraq. They are called al-Sahwa councils.

Now, the Americans are trying to convince the Iraqi government to include those groups into the Iraqi security forces, but the Iraqi government said no!

The Iraqi government’s argument is that no one who caused the death of Iraqis should be in the Iraqi forces!

My argument would be: What about the Shiite militias, like Bard troops and al-Mehdi army? Didn’t Ibrahim al-Jaafari start to include them in the Iraqi police and army in May 2005? And didn’t Maliki authorize 18,000 Shiite militia members to join the police and army just less than a month ago? And what about the pesh merga? Weren’t they militias and now they are considered part of the Iraqi security forces?

On another subject, reporters are now changing their tone when they talk about the situation in Baghdad. As we all noticed, in the last two months, and maybe three, news outlets have been talking about how Baghdad is “safe” and how the security situation is improving, which led to the return of thousands of Iraqis from Syria to Baghdad, or that’s what they claimed.

The Iraqi government did its best to advertise the return of many Iraqis to Baghdad, but did not explain why they returned. The government provided buses to those who were “willing” to return. And the press, especially the American press, served as the advertising company for the Iraqi government and published stories and aired shows talking about the return of some families, encouraged by the “safety and improving situation” in Baghdad.

I, and many other informed Iraqi bloggers, wrote about this misleading, in which the American media played a vital role. And we warned that the return of some Iraqis is not because of the “improving situation,” but because their visas expired in Syria and they were kicked out of the country, or they spent all their savings and cannot stay there. So, we said that the Iraqis were forced to go back and did not choose to.

Did reporters ask why only the Iraqis who fled to Syria were going back before they wrote their misleading stories? No.

I can tell you why:

The Iraqis who left to Jordan were the early ones to leave Iraq because they were able to afford it. Jordan is a very expensive place and therefore only the high class and upper middle class Iraqis could go there and afford to live without the need to work. And those who were not as wealthy were able to find jobs in the early days of the migration in late 2003. And because they arrived to Jordan that early, they were able to get permanent residencies, before the Jordanian government decided that they’ve sucked enough oil and money from Iraq and decided to stop issuing visas to Iraqis.

After that, everyone wanted to leave because the situation became unbearable in Iraq, but most of them did not have the financial ability to live in Jordan and because the Jordanians stopped giving Iraqis residencies. So, the best second choice was Syria. Syria is cheap and was open to host Iraqis. So, all the Iraqis who moved to Syria were middle class and working class people, who were only able to live outside Iraq for a while, spending their savings.

But then they run out of money and their visas expired. The Syrians don’t extend the visas and there are no jobs for Iraqis. What is the solution? Go back to Iraq.

And now, everything is clear to the “brilliant” reporters at the New York Times and The Washington Post. Finally, they realized what we’ve said proved to be right.

Most returnees came back to find themselves homeless. They lost their houses to strangers backed by militias or insurgents. They lost their jobs and now are living with relatives.

The Washington Post reported yesterday:

Many have run out of money and options in Syria, Jordan and other Arab countries, all of which have recently intensified efforts to evict Iraqi refugees. Others have exhausted the patience and resources of family and friends. Lured by reports of security improvements and encouraged by a government eager to demonstrate normalcy, they have started to trickle back over the past two months.

“It's very easy to say, ‘Come home,’ ” the reporter quoted Guy Siri, the U.N. deputy humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, as saying. He added: “But come home where, and how? It's much more complex than that. You have to look at the whole environment, how the community will accept them, whether it's economically viable. There's a whole lot of thinking on the government side to be done.”

And the Iraqi government is doing absolutely nothing. It promised to bring back the returnees to their homes, and it did not. Foreign reporters and U.S. administration only focused on the return and the promises, but they did not do the most obvious step of writing a story: a follow up story!

The government also promised financial aid for those who returned so they can start their lives over, but it did not deliver any help.

I and other Iraqi bloggers talked about the sectarian carving of Baghdad’s neighborhoods and said that it was the reason why the number of people killed in the city is low. I specifically said:

Sunnis cannot go to Shiite neighborhoods and Shiites cannot go to Sunni neighborhoods. Therefore, there are not as many targets in the streets like before. And that’s why you think that the number of people killed in the streets is less and violence has decreased.

But I was cursed!

Now, here is an American saying the same thing:

“There is an element of the violence being down because segregation has already happened,” Col. William E. Rapp, a senior aide to Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said in the Post’s story. “The violence is still at the fault lines, and we're sitting on those fault lines.”

The UN, along with U.S. officials in Iraq, asked the Iraqis government to hold the free bus rides from Syria to Baghdad.

Now you believe?

Something else:

Even the government of Kurdistan, which was always secular and had nothing to do with political Islam, is changing its strategy and is going backwards. After giving up on real politics and professional negotiations, Prime Minister of Kurdistan, Nejervan Barzani, appealed to Ali al-Sistani, the top Shiite cleric, to help him settle the issue of Kirkuk.

Is that what we sacrificed for and are calling for; Iraq where turbaned snakes govern and Islamic laws and rules from 1500 years ago tell me how to live and eat and drink? Because that's where Iraq is heading and it seems that Nouri al-Maliki and Usama bin Laden have succeeded!

… And Omar Welcome You to Our House!

2007-12-04T01:24:00.000-05:00

From time to time, I write a post about a personal experience, if I find it appropriate and interesting to the readers in a way that involves a cultural learning or differences.

Today, I want to tell you about my Thanksgiving trip.

This year, I went to Orange County, where one of my American families live. I know this family for some time now. They are my close friend’s in-laws. Although it sounds like they are not very close to me, but they are. They are some of the best people that I’ve ever met-- true Americans, as I like to say.

It is very interesting how all the cultural differences and backgrounds suddenly melt away just because people want to understand each other. I am a Muslim and they are Jewish.

They picked me up from the airport, although they had a lot to do that day. When I arrived to the house, I was welcomed as a family member. Everyone was waiting for me, not in a formal way. But they all were expecting me to come because I am one of them, or so I strongly felt.

What I like to share with you from Thanksgiving Day is how the owner of the house, whom I will call “Mr. Father” greeted the visitors. More than 25 people were invited to dinner that day.

Once it’s dinner time, we took our seats around the tables, which were beautifully decorated with centerpieces of banana leaves and roses. And Mr. Father shushed us all to greet everybody and toast:

“I, Ellen, ---, ---, ---, ---, and Omar and grandma welcome you to our house and wish you a happy Thanksgiving,” he said.

I was only listening when he said the words, I wasn’t looking at him or anybody else. But once I heard my name, I was suddenly overwhelmed with conflicting emotions. I didn’t know what to do: happy because this wonderful man considers me as one of the family, or sad because I am not with my immediate family, or proud because that’s how much they like me, or whatever. I was certainly feeling all these emotions in one second and a split.

I looked at Mr. Father, who looked blurry to me because of the shy tears in my eyes, and saw a big smile on his face as if saying “yes, you are one of us.” I looked at my friend, who was holding his wife in both arms, and saw big smiles on their faces, smiles that made me feel very comfortable and happy to be with them. And I looked at the people in the room, and they all smiled and nodded with satisfaction.

I spent the rest of the night laughing and joking with people, sharing funny stories from my time here and from back home.

The next day, the family decided that while everyone is there they should celebrate an early Hanukkah. We had a breakfast and then they lit the menorah. Then came the fun part: they exchanged gifts and I got to watch the happy children as they opened their gifts, and I also watched grownups open their gifts and try them on [mostly clothes.] and then came the surprise, I got gifts too, and holiday cards! [The picture above is of grandma’s card.]

This is my life in the US. I never had a bad experience with people. I’ve been to north, south, east and west in this country and have never encountered problems with people. Wherever I go, people are nice, welcoming, generous and understanding. Even those who I disagreed with over different issue, not necessarily Iraq, were always polite.

While we are talking about Thanksgiving, let me share with you a few lines from a 1500-word piece I wrote last year after I spent Thanksgiving with another friend’s family in Vermont.

It was nine in the morning the next day when I woke up humming the words of the Iraqi national anthem. I don’t know when I started, but I thought I was dreaming when I heard the tone to which I hummed. But it wasn’t a dream.

Because Bassam and I weren’t up yet, Jon played the Iraqi anthem on the flute right outside the door. He thought it would be a nice way to wake up on the sound of the Iraqi anthem. It wasn’t only nice, it was great and perfect. Everything was perfect in this trip.

It was Thanksgiving Day. It was a great day. The sun was up and the fields around the house were marvelous. I couldn’t see the place the night before because it was dark. It is a piece of heaven, I thought. I argued with Bassam that God cannot make better than such a place to call heaven. It was perfect: nice weather, clean air, quiet surroundings, water sparkled in springs, birds chirping and us having fun.

My job was to light the candles in the chandelier in the big room, which was built in the late 1700s and is centered by a giant square dining table. [the tradition in this house is that Jon’s father gets to light the candles. But this year, he said, he will make an exception and asked me to do it to show me how much he is happy that we are here.]

We were about 20 people around the table, but there was space for more.

“I’m most happy when we have company,” Jon’s father said as he offered the toast. “You can all come back anytime. This is permanent.”

I looked at the people around me, they were happy. I was happy too. It was loud and that was perfect to hum some Iraqi songs.

“Eid [Arabic for feast] and love tonight and people are celebrating,” I sang. “If you were with me, it would be twice as happy.” I pictured my family as I sang.

This is the kind of experience I am having in the States. How can I not love this country and its people? How can I not push for better relations and great friendship between Iraq and the United States when I am an Iraqi politician in the future?

Therefore, when it was my turn to say what I am thankful for this year, I said: “I don’t want to sound political, but I am thankful for this nation because it gave me a chance to live. It gave me people like you, who I consider family and it gave me this moment when I heard my name said as part of this family.”

I want to add now that “this nation gave me a home, when my home rejected me.”

Feeh

Note: Ali has written a piece too and there is a new piece by Yasmie on the Visiting Writers site.

Why Don't You Go Then!

2007-11-21T13:37:00.000-05:00

I was following the news about the “improved security” in Baghdad over the last two weeks. I wanted to give myself some time to absorb what is being said and make sure I understand what they are talking about. I also have been talking with family and friends in Baghdad to get a bigger picture.

I have to say, I am losing faith in journalism every day!

My parents, who live in a Sunni neighborhood, tell me that “we cannot leave our neighborhood because if we do we will end up in a Shiite neighborhood and be killed, like what happened to many others>

Many of my friends tell me that “it is all either Shiites or Sunnis now. If you mix, you get killed.”

Is this the “improved security” now?

Today, the TimesOnline said “Iraqi refugees are returning home in dramatic numbers, concluding that security in Baghdad has been transformed.”

Did they go to the Syrian embassy in Iraq and see if Iraqis can get a visa? Did they go to Syria and see if the Iraqis can extend their visas? They did mention that it is difficult to extend the residency, but they insisted that most of the Iraqis are retuning because it is “safe” in Iraq now.

More than a month ago, Syria announced that it was going to facilitate the process of Iraqis entering the country and will require $50 for each visitor. What the American and British media didn’t tell you is that that announcement was a lie. What happened is that Syria continued to deport Iraqis and the $50 was a fee for those who already have residencies and want to leave the country and come back. They have to pay $50 each! Did you know about that?

The Washington Post has been talking about the “improved security” in Baghdad for weeks now. But I wonder why they have at least two Iraqi reporters’ names at the end of every article as contributors! Why cannot the American reporters go out and report this “improved security?”

The New York Times usually takes a short cut and doesn’t give contribution to the enormous work their Iraqi reporters do to make writing a story possible and that’s why yesterday they ran a front page story about the “improved security” in Baghdad. I am sure at least 60% of the work was done by Iraqi reporters because the Americans cannot go out and report in the street!

Baghdad neighborhoods are sealed, barbed wires, Jersey walls, sand bags and other obstacles greet the Baghdadis when they leave their houses, if they do.

Women have to wear headscarf outside the house. Women cannot drive. Men cannot wear shorts. Men cannot walk with women in the street, unless they are relative of some kind. Kids don’t go to schools because they fear to be kidnapped. Employees don’t go to their work for fear of assassinations.

Is this “improved security?”

The power in Iraq now is the Mehdi Army and Badr troops. The decision maker is Ali al-Sistani. The Prime Minister vetos any law to bring any minister from his party or his alliance to justice for corruption. The Iraqis tell the prime minister that militias are killing their sons and daughters, and he says “no militias should be allowed to work in the streets,” and at the same time, he adds 18,000 militia members to the police force [2 weeks ago.]

Is this “improved security?”

Here is a report from today’s Reuters
MOSUL - A truck bomb exploded near the house of a tribal leader, killing one person and wounding three others in Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. The leader, a member of a local tribal council overseeing neighbourhood policing efforts, was not at his home at the time.

BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier and an Iraqi interpreter were killed when a roadside bomb detonated near their patrol in eastern Baghdad on Tuesday, the U.S. military said. Three U.S. soldiers were wounded.

BAGHDAD - U.S. forces killed six suspected insurgents and detained 10 others during operations targeting al Qaeda in central and northern Iraq on Tuesday and Wednesday, the U.S. military said.

DIWANIYA - Police arrested 30 people, accused of assassinations and other attacks against Iraqi security forces, in the city of Diwaniya, 180 km (110 miles) south of Baghdad, over the past 48 hours, police said.

RAMADI - At least six people were killed when a car exploded outside a courthouse being guarded by police in the city of Ramadi, 110 km (70 miles) west of Baghdad, one police officer said. Another police source put the death toll at four, with 15 wounded.

BAGHDAD - Three policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their patrol in Mansour district of western Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Iraqi security forces found at least nine bodies in different areas of Baghdad, Iraqi army and police said. Six of the decomposed corpses were buried in the gardens of two abandoned houses in the Saidiya district of southern Baghdad.

LONDON - Two British military personnel were killed in Iraq on Tuesday when their Puma helicopter crashed near Baghdad, the Ministry of Defence said. The ministry said it was too early to speculate on the cause of the crash.

Here is more

BAGHDAD (AP) — Police in Iraq say at least six people are dead after a suicide car bomb exploded at a police checkpoint guarding a courthouse in Anbar province.

Is this “improved security?”

We need to realize that what is happening in Baghdad now is not an improved security situation. What is happening now is the result of violence. Baghdad is carved into sectarian neighborhoods now; Shiite and Sunni neighborhoods. Sunnis cannot go to Shiite neighborhoods and Shiites cannot go to Sunni neighborhoods. Therefore, there are not as many targets in the streets like before. And that’s why you think that the number of people killed in the streets is less and violence has decreased.

What Maliki wanted, which is a sectarian Baghdad ran by his militias, is achieved. He and his poisonous Mullahs, like Sistani, Hakim and Jaafari, wanted to force out the Sunnis and create a Shiite Baghdad. On the other hand, Hareth al-Dhari and his criminals wouldn’t let this happen, so they insisted to stay. The result is hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed. And now, a sectarian Baghdad.

If I live in Baghdad now, I need to stay in my neighborhood. How do I go to work? How do I shop? How do I see my friends? How do I live?

The Sunni neighborhoods are controlled by Sunni insurgents and they are supposed to tell me where to go and where not toand whether I can drive my car in the street or not! And the Shiite neighborhoods are controlled by Shiite militias, Sistani worshippers, and they are supposed to prevent me from going into the neighborhood where I was born and lived for 12 years, Kadhimiya, because it is a Shiite neighborhood and I carry a Sunni first name!

Is this “improved security?”

When Treasure of Baghdad wrote about the miserable security situation in Iraq a few days ago, everyone jumped off their seats and attacked him for saying the truth. Many of the attackers told him that he was lying because “everyone is saying the situation has improved” but him. They told him that people are walking in the streets and living a normal life. They told him to go back to Iraq and see for himself that he was “lying.”

I now invite those deceived [or maybe just mad] people to go to Iraq and tell us what they see. If they do believe that Iraq is “safe” now, why don’t they go and tell us what happens? One of them is a bloger who claims to be Iraqi and knows everything about Iraq, more than Treasure of Baghdad and I do, although he left Iraq more than 25 years ago and was never back since. Now, I invite him to go to Iraq and live “normal life” with his relatives and report from there!

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

I Knew It!

2007-11-05T23:08:00.000-05:00

The game is going as planned!

Now, they are saying that PKK members are leaving Iraq and going to Iran to hide from the Turkish military forces!

“The PKK has decreased its forces in Iraqi Kurdistan and they are moving to Iran,” Othman Ocalan, brother of imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, told The Independent. “It is part of PKK tactics that when they feel pressure in one country, they move to another.”

Now, Turkey has no legitimate reason to go into Iraq with major force to rout the PKK out because they are retreating into Iran.

Is Turkey going after them inside Iran?
There is no way Turkey is going to wave the card of “invasion” in Iran’s face. Then, my next question would be: “So, PKK members threaten the Turkish national security when they are in Iraq, but they don’t when they are in Iran?”

Now, the Turkish, Iraqi and American governments have passed three different messages to the Iraqi Kurds, separately.

Turkish message was: We have the force to destroy your stability. We can use it when we want, especially when you are alone.

U.S. message was: We are not going to protect you against Turkey, our NATO ally. You have to find someone else to back you up.

The Iraqi government message was: Well, that’s what’s going to happen when you are on your own. Are you still thinking about having your own separate state?

On Saturday, the Iranian government presented a plan to help Iraq go out of the security bottle-neck. One of the suggestions Iran put in the plan is to delay the work on Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution for at least two years! [Article 140 is the one that demands “normalization and census and concludes with a referendum in Kirkuk and other disputed territories to determine the will of their citizens by a date not to exceed the 31st of December 2007.”

Are you able to connect the dots now?

Although it is a clear and loud intervention in Iraq’s interior affairs, Nouri al-Maliki and his henchmen have not opposed it yet and did not object on the intervention. [Why should they when Maliki is publicly working on the Iranization of Iraq.]

On a different issue, but still in the same horrific situation of Iraq, the Iraqi Red Crescent, or IRC, in a statement announced that the number of the displaced within Iraq reached 2.3 million Iraqis, a 16% increase from last month.

IRC statement also talked about the false promises Maliki’s government ahs given the Iraqis before when it promised to bring back the displaced to their houses when it is safe for them to do so. Although the Iraqi government’s propaganda, backed by every major American media outlet, is working very well on faking the success of the “surge” in Iraq, the displaced have not been able to return to their homes.

IRC also talked about the $25 million Maliki said that the Iraqi government was giving to help Iraqi refugees outside Iraq. the statement said although Maliki announced it months ago, nothing has been given yet. But I am sure the money left the government’s account, it just did not go where it was supposed to go!

Ali has also published a very interesting post about Iraqi and American cultures meeting where he lives.

Maybe It's Not What We Think!

2007-10-28T00:09:00.000-04:00

I have a totally different way to look at the Turkish threats to invade Iraq, and analyze them. I don’t know why I cannot take things for granted and have to dig deeper.

Why now?

The Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, or PKK, has been based in Iraq for a long time. Why only now Turkey wants to put an end to its existence? Because they’ve attacked Turkish troops and killed a bunch of them? No, because that happened before, even before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. In the armed conflict in the early 1980s, about 40,000 people were killed from both sides, Turkish and the PKK.

There is no way Turkey is going to actually invade Iraq. We have to remember that Turkey is a member of the NATO and it is not in its best interests to upset the U.S. So, unless they get the green light from the United States, which would be another loud international “shame on you” for the Bush administration, they will continue to threat only.

They’ll attack villages? Yes. They’ll bomb places inside Iraq? Yes, because they already have the U.S. blessings to do that. PKK after all is listed as a terrorist organization.

So, why now?

I came up with an answer for that.

Well, first of all: because why not? Iraq is opened to the public! Whoever wants to invade can simply spare a few tanks, a dozen attack helicopters and a couple thousand soldiers, especially when the U.S. troops are busy figuring out how to escape Iraq.

Who is going to defend the country against any other invasion? Iraq doesn’t have an army [and for those who are trying to play words game, I will add “qualified” before the word army.] And the U.S. Army is not going to fight with the Turks to protect Iraq. It is just plain impossible.

Then I thought about it from a political point of view:

Remember what Masoud Barzani, President of Kurdistan region and the leader of Kurdistan Democratic Party, said two months ago about the issue of Kirkuk on the U.S. funded al-Hurrah TV? He said: “If they don’t solve it, then all the options are possible… if they don’t work on article 140 of the constitution, there will be a real civil war.”

That was when everyone understood that Barzani was actually sending a direct threat to the Iraqi government and Arab Iraqis, now that they have no real power to defend themselves.

By “they” he meant the Iraqi government. And article 140 is the one that demands “normalization and census and concludes with a referendum in Kirkuk and other disputed territories to determine the will of their citizens by a date not to exceed the 31st of December 2007.”

I cannot see the Iraqi politicians, who are fighting each other on daily basis, dealing with or solving the issue of Kirkuk. The Maliki government has not paved one street in all over Iraq since it came to power early 2006!

Also, in early 2006, Barzani was asked on Arabiya TV whether he had said before that he wanted Kurdistan to be a separate states, he said: “I was asked if there were a civil war between the Shiites and Sunnis what will we do, my answer was ‘we will separate.’ … Independence is the Kurdish nation’s legitimate right like it is of any other nation.”

Therefore, given that there is a civil war in Iraq, Barzani has in fact started to act as if he is governing an independent state. First with refusing to raise the Iraqi flag, and then the Kurdish authorities prevented Arab families from entering Kurdistan unless they have a Kurdish sponsor. Now, if any Arab family wants to live in Kurdistan, they have to get residency. In fact, if you want to go to Kurdistan, you can get a Kurdistan visa that is different from the Iraqi one!

Then comes the oil law. Before even the Iraqi parliament discussed it [it hasn’t passed yet] the Kurdish parliament passed it and activated it. They have signed contracts with foreign companies.

There are huge numbers of Kurds in Syria, turkey and Iran. If the Iraqi Kurds succeeded to separate and get their own state, why not the others? Is that another enormous problem in the region or what! Can you imagine the size and depth of such a conflict?

Why do you think on October 17, Bashar al-Assad of Syria intervened in the discussions and said “We support the decisions the Turkish government has put on its agenda against terrorism and terrorist activities. We see this as Turkey's legitimate right." ?

So, if the Iraqi government cannot stop the civil war, which the Kurds are afraid of, and cannot solve the issue of Kirkuk, which is what the Kurds want, how do we stop the Kurds from strengthening their independence?

Keep them busy!

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

2007-10-17T02:05:00.000-04:00

First of all, I am so sorry for the delay in writing a new post. I don’t know what happened! I just lost the words for a while. I really wasn’t able to write one paragraph.

I heard a very disturbing report today on Radio Sawa on the Iraqi-Turkey issue. As the Turks are preparing to invade Iraq [why not if everyone has an army can, and if there is no Iraqi government and military forces to defend the country] they have been sending messages to the American administration saying that no one can stop them if they wanted to go ahead and kill hundreds more of civilian Iraqis in their pursue of Turkish rebellions in northern Iraq.

But what drew my attention [because very rarely nowadays something draws my attention in the news from Iraq] is an interview with one of the Iraqi deputy ministers of Foreign Affair in which he said that the security agreement that was signed lately by Iraq and Turkey had different text in Arabic than the one in Turkish!

“This is the main issue of the agreement, but the Arabic version says that a condition for the Turkish forces to enter Iraq is to get a permission from the Iraqi government,” the deputy minister said. “But the Turkish version says that the Turkis forces enters Iraq and then tells the Iraqi government. They just have to tell, not take permission from the Iraqi government.”

Still, the Iraqi government signed the agreement!

What is a stronger evidence that Iraq is a failed state that this? If we have a government that doesn’t read the agreements it signs, and doesn’t provide security to its people, and doesn’t provide food to its people, and doesn’t maintain the infrastructure in the whole country, and doesn’t realize that it is mid October and schools have not opened yet, what kind of a government is that?

The Kurds have signed contracts with foreign companies to invest in the oil resources in northern Iraq before the Oil Law is even discussed in the Iraqi parliament.

From Reuters today:

"There are a lot of minors coming from Iraq to Sweden now," said Swedish Red Cross refugee expert Dick Clomen. "A lot of them are not truly unaccompanied -- they travel with other people -- but they have no legal guardians. They suffer from being away from their families, lack of role models, psychological trauma which must be dealt with."

"I last saw my family two years ago,” 16-year-old Said told Reuters through a translator at a centre for Iraqi underage refugees on the outskirts of Stockholm. “They are happy because I am away from death."

What kind of a government is Maliki’s if the youth are fleeing the country? What are the seeds of the future of Iraq?

The political parties are fighting still since April 2003. The Shiite politicians and turbaned snakes are fighting each other [although some of you were deceived by the latest announcement that Hakim and Sadr had signed an agreement to worked together, I want to remind you that this is the third time they sign this agreement over the last four years!] and the Sunni politicians don’t want to reconcile with the Shiite politicians and also the Shiite politicians will never reconcile with their Sunni rivals obviously. The Kurds basically don’t care what happens west and south of their borders. I am not just saying these things, I have four years of failed politics to support what I am saying.

Now, if there are more than four million Iraqis displaced within and outside Iraq, if the youth don’t like the government and the older don’t and the elderly don’t, as polls are telling us, why is Maliki still in power? And why do we blame Saddam Hussein for staying in power although people did not want him? And why did not we want Saddam Hussein and we are not doing anything to get rid of Maliki?

Why doesn’t the world see the malfunction of the Iraqi government? Seriously!

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

Progress: Not Only Cholera, But Scabies Too!

2007-09-25T03:08:00.000-04:00

From yesterday's Azzaman Newspaper:

“A health ministry source said yesterday that 15,000 detainees in the ministry of Interior prisons are suffering from Scabies. The disease panicked other detainees in the prisons that lack the basics needed to host human beings. Although the number of the infected is high, the Iraqi authorities did not provide any medical treatment to them. At the same time, the Iraqi authorities have refused requests fro international committees and organizations to visit these prisons and observe to specify what is needed.

The source, who visited some Interior ministry prisons, also said that the prisons authorities and the ministry of Health have not done anything to deal with this problem.”

Talk about progress made in Iraq now! And tell me about qualified people in the government!

Where is the “majority” when this is happening?

Some will say that under Saddam Hussein, the situation was worse in detention facilities. And I will say: So? Wasn’t that the reason why we wanted to be “freed” so we improve the life of all people, including prisoners?

Do you realize where Iraq is heading, or has been heading for a while? It is going down. Chaos, killings, car bombs, civil war, instable government, cholera and now scabies. In a few months, if this did not stop, Iraq will be wiped out of the map. It will be only a black hole on the planet.

15,000 persons with scabies! This is 15,000 lives and 15,000 futures. It is 15,000 families that were killed before they were born.

Do you realize the size of this catastrophe? We are in the 21 century for crying out loud and it is Iraq! It was until very recently the most powerful, most educated and most liberal country in the Middle East.

Where is the people that were voted into the government? Where are the followers of Sistani and Harith al-Dhari who vowed to serve the Iraqi nation?

Maliki and Talbani are vacationing in New York and talking to the world about the “progress” they’ve made in Iraq, when dozens of thousands of Iraqis are waiting for death come to their hospital bedsides suffering from cholera, or in prisons suffering from scabies.

How much longer do we have to wait and how many more Iraqis have to die and how much louder we have to cry for the world to realize that this Maliki’s government, the sectarian government and the government that was formed by giving shares to exiles who don’t care about Iraq and their only interest is to sink it more, is not working. That this government has failed since day one. That this government is not going to work?

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

They are traumatized!

2007-09-22T02:38:00.000-04:00

Many comments on this blog talk about how Shiites now have power in Iraq and how that should be a great model for other countries, not to bring Shiites to government but to let the majority in the lead. I don’t disagree with this theory, but I do have many concerns.

Let’s look at Iraq: After the invasion in 2003 the “Shiites” came to power. And I put the word Shiites between quotation marks because I don’t believe the Shiites who are in the government now represent any faction of Iraqis.

Who is in power? Absul Aziz al-Hakim, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, Nouri al-Maliki, Muqtada al-Sadr, Hussein al-Shehristani and others. Does anyone of them represent Iraqis on a wide range?

What did the Iraqi Shiites, or “the majority” as they like to be called now, get from this government? Even something as minor as renovating the Askariya shrine that was bombed in February 2006 did not happen. What kind of developments did the Shiite south get so far?

We have witnessed two Shiite governments in Iraq since the invasion in 2003. What good did that bring Iraq?

The political leaders in Iraq now are Shiites by name only, but they don’t care about Iraq or Iraqis, obviously. They are all traumatized; they were forced to leave the country decades ago, many of their family members were killed by the baathist regime in Iraq. Hakim alone lost more than 60 relatives to the baathist government. Dawa party was banned and anyone with links to it was killed or forced out of the country.

That is the background our current leaders came with. Did it ever occur to anyone that the current leaders of Iraq are traumatized to the bone and such background doesn’t qualify people to be decision makers?

How can someone with a history of sorrows and agonies like Hakim be trusted to govern Iraq? He has all this hatred in his heart, understandably, and the only thought he has in mind is to take revenge. Not only by ordering his Badr “organization” to kill Sunnis everywhere and for no guilt of theirs, but also by turning a deaf ear and blind eye on the corruption of the government. Why should he care? This is the country that killed his relatives and sent him to exile for years and years.

This may sound harsh, but it is the truth, I believe.

Dawa party is leading Iraq now?! Are you kidding me! This party lost thousands of people to Saddam Hussein’s government and its followers will never forget the ugly campaigns the former regime launched against them. Does that mean they have a right to be the ruling power in Iraq now? NO. It means they should be allowed to participate in the government if they want. But it is not a must that the Prime Minister of Iraq is from Dawa party, which is the condition now in the political mayhem there.

They are all traumatized. They need help, not positions.

What did we expect when we allowed relatives of those who were killed by Saddam Hussein to assume power? Many people believe in the myth that Saddam Hussein favored Sunnis over others in Iraq and that all Sunnis were exempt from his torture, how do you want this traumatized group of exiles to treat Sunnis? And how do you want the Sunnis to react to what is happening to them in Iraq now?

I have a relative who worked as the manager of the financial department of one of the ministries for at least two decades. She was never a baathist and that got her in trouble several times, but the minister at the time liked her work and defended her. She was known for her honesty and diligence. But a few months after her ministry was taken by one of the Shiite groups, the minister approached her and said “frankly, we love your work and know that you have a great reputation, but now is the time of Shiites. I have to let you go.”

I never joined baath party, Dawa party, Hakim’s party or Sadr group. Does that mean I am not Iraqi and don’t have the right to be in a leading position in the government in the future?

Tell me now, is this the way it should be? Now is the time for Shiites? And what, the Sunnis go die?

Well, the answer according to the current system in Iraq is: Yes it does.

Iraqi Mojo commented on my last entry and said “but the fact is that his top guys were mostly Sunni Arabs. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging that.”

And I wanted to ask him and all those who believe in this theory: And who are the top guys in post-war Iraq governments? Aren’t they only Shiites?

Under Saddam Hussein regime, you had to be favored by Hussein to get a position, and now you have to be favored by Sistani, Hakim and Jaafari to be in the government. Why are we still whining about Hussein’s time then?

“Part of the healing is acknowledging the truth about what happened. It helps us heal,” Iraqi Mojo said. But I ask: heal from what? And how? By phasing out every single Iraqi, who does not identify as a Shiite, and bring in whoever is in the street and fits the word even if they are unqualified? Is that how the new Iraq is going to heal?

What did the average Sunnis do to you and others so you want to heal? And if this is “help” why hasn’t is been working? And why it will definitely not work?

How will it help to keep talking about what Saddam Hussein did, or Zarqawi, or Sadr, or Hakim, or Harith al-Dhari?

The Iraqis need someone to unite them. They need someone to say “OK, hundreds of thousands were killed during Saddam and after him. Let’s forget about that time now and for ever. The best way to honor the dead is to prove that their lives did not go in vein and start building what they spent their lives hoping for, that is an Iraq where people can live together and be able to plan for ten years ahead.”

What we need now is a secular government that cares about renovating the infrastructure more than it cares about spending millions of dollars on religious shrines. We need a government that would build housing units so people can get jobs and places to live and get married and continue the circle of life that has been on hold since 2003. Shrines should always come later, never before human beings and their needs. Sistani and Harith al-Dhari should never be names mentioned when we talk about the government, never. If they want to be religious authority, then give them a rug and ask them to teach people how to pray. That’s what they are good for and that’s what they should be doing.

Don’t you think?

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

Note: Ali published a new entry also. It's interesting.

trick accomplished!

2007-09-10T22:24:00.000-04:00

Most of us, who are interested in what is going on in Iraq, watched live General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker testifying on the situation in Iraq in the Cannon Caucus Room this morning and recommending steps in the path ahead. But I wonder how many people emphasized on the details of the session.

The testimony was not surprising. In fact they did not come up with anything that I haven’t talked about and predicted at least eight months ago, and for that matter many people did, too.

Progress is tangible in Iraq, success is attainable, the Iraqi government is facing challenges, the Iraqi forces are capable of handling the situation on their own or close to, the political parties are about to reconcile, the Iraqis are feeling the progress, less car bombs, less sectarian killings, less bodies in the streets and on and on with this talk, which I assume we are all used to now.

What struck me the most in the whole session was a sentence that was said in the introduction before the general spoke. Tom Lantos, Chairman of House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said that the Iraqi government should know that “the free ride is over.”

What an insult to Iraqis and Americans. You think that a career politician like Lantos would know by now how to choose his words. A “free ride”?

Let’s do the expenses here for a minute:

Hundred of thousands of Iraqis were killed.
About four million Iraqis displaced outside and inside Iraq.
People imprisoned in their homes and cannot leave because it is dangerous to peak over the outside door.
Dozens of bodies found tortured to death every single day in and around Baghdad and in other provinces.
The Iraqi youth have no teachers and professors, they stopped going to schools for fear of being murdered in one way or another, and they have no future.
Thousands of Iraqis lost their jobs in the “new democratic” Iraq and lost every means to provide for their families.
And many other items…

Was it a “free ride?”

Another thought:
Petraeus summarized by saying: “I have recommended a drawdown of the surge forces from Iraq,” starting end of this month. The interesting part is that I am not a politician, not a military man, not a professional political analyst but I was still able to interpret all this happening back in January. Read this post.

Have you noticed the political trick Bush played on the Americans yet?
He sent more than 20,000 more troops to Iraq earlier this year and is going to withdraw them by next July. Then we will be left with the original number of American troops in Iraq after all. So what did he do? Where is the withdrawal that most Americans are asking for?

This was the most awaited report from and on Iraq. What did it add to what we already know or heard about?

And what happens after July 2008?

“It would be premature to make recommendations on the pace of such reductions at this time,” Petraeus said.

Good for you. “Mission accomplished.” Or should I say: trick accomplished?

You can watch video clips from the hearing on CNN

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

Progress in Anbar!

2007-09-03T23:55:00.000-04:00

We "came here today to see with our own eyes the multiple changes that are taking place in Anbar province," President Bush said today during his visit to Iraq. "Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker tell me if the kind of success we are now seeing continues, it will be possible to maintain the same level of security with fewer American forces."

For months now we’ve been hearing about the “success” and “stability” some parts of central Iraq are enjoying due to the “successful” surge that Bush tasked earlier this year. US generals and politicians have been talking about how safe the streets in Fallujah and Ramadi have become. They claim to be able to walk down the streets there with no flack jackets and with minimum security. They even invited Congress members and other influential figures to visit cities in Anbar province to see how “safe” they are.

Although any human being with the smallest working brain would know that this is not true, newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post and Los Angeles Times were tricked into it. I’ve read many stories talking about the “progress” that have been made in Anbar and other places. And that makes me furious because it proves that earlier this year, when I said that we will hear lies about “progress” in Iraq just to prepare for the withdrawal and that no one will care about the Iraqis anymore, I was right.

“We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq,” Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack said in a piece in the New Yok Times five weeks ago. They went to Iraq and spent eight days only, shuttled in armored vehicles when they weren’t flying in black hocks. Eight days… and did they meet Iraqis? NO.

“The first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops,” they said in the third paragraph, which is what we call “the nut graph” that tells the whole point and reason of writing a story. Do you get it?

“Last week we strolled down its streets without body armor,” they said about Ramadi. But did they tell us that it was ONE street only? No. they said “streets.” Did they tell us that this street was blocked four years ago and no car is allowed to move on it? Did they tell us that the street only leads to the US troops barracks, which means average Iraqis don’t use it anymore but to cross from one neighborhood to another? Did they tell us that it was the main street in Ramadi that was the busiest in the city and until it is the busiest again we cannot say it is normal again there?

I don’t get it. How can the Americans be so foolish? Why don’t they ask questions? Why don’t they check the information that is being fed to the?

Don't we still remember the city of Tal Afar in the north? Don’t we remember when Bush called it a “success story” a while ago and since then it’s been the perfect spot for al-Qaeda to stage their car bombs and suicide attacks? It is one of the most powerful evidences of the failure in Iraq.

If it is such a success in Anbar, where are the construction projects? Why don’t we see one factory back to working there? Anbar province houses Iraq’s biggest glass factory. Why isn’t it functioning again? And why we don’t see one single street being cleaned up of the rubble of four years of destruction? And why do we still see cement barriers and barbed wires everywhere?

Even if it is true and Anbar is safe now, should the Iraqi government be making all the efforts to start reconstruction there to make an example for Iraq to follow? How can the Iraqis be motivated if when there is insurgency, they have to suffer, and when there is not they also have to suffer. Why should they help the government to stabilize the country if in both cases the only winners are the Shiite government, Kurdish politicians and Sunni insurgents?

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

For Maliki, Everyone Is A Baathist!

2007-08-28T11:43:00.000-04:00

So, now every one in Iraq is either “baathist”or Saddamist.”

Unless they agree with Nouri al-Maliki and are happy with his continuous failure, they are all terrorists.

It only reminds us of the time when Saddam Hussein used such stupid excuses to kill his rivals. Whenever people disagreed with his policy, he called them “members of the collaborator, Dawa party,” to which Nouri al-Maliki belongs.

Very ironic and disgusting.

Not only Iraqis! He called France “Saddamists.” France as a country. Can you believe it!

Maliki “got to be replaced," Bernard Kouchner, the French minister of Foreign Affairs, told Condi riceafter a short visit to Baghdad. But said that he wasn’t sure ousting Maliki would happen anytime soon “because it seems President Bush is attached to Mr Maliki. But the government is not functioning.”

So, Maliki was furious after he heard that. He even started to think like a tribal leader, not like the leader of Iraq. “After we welcomed him here and opened our doors, although France supported the former regime, and then he attacks our national unity government,” Maliki said in a news conference.

He doesn’t know what to do. Maliki is being attacked by everyone now, but he wouldn’t give up the position. [does it ring a bell!]

Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin also called for Maliki’s removal from the government.

"There are American officials who consider Iraq as if it were one of their villages, for example Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin," Maliki said in the same news conference. "They should come to their senses."

It must be really hard for him to come in one news conference and defend himself and his lame strategy against some of the most powerful countries in the world.

And in the Iraqi Parliament too, some members are talking about replacing Maliki. When Maliki heard about it, he threatened that he has documents showing connections between members of the parliament and terrorist groups or corruption. He said that he was going to present the documents to the parliament when he appears on its floor soon.

He used this strategy before: when the Sunnis were demanding more power about a year ago, he came to the parliament and presented documents that linked some of the Sunni parliament members to insurgency. And that occupied the Sunnis for a while and silenced them.

I wonder how many documents Maliki has to prove connections of every militia in Iraq to his cabinet or to his masters, the turbaned snakes.

Why is Bush still defending Maliki’s failure government is beyond my understanding. Maybe he fears to be called baathist and Saddamist, who knows!

It's become a nasty joke!

2007-08-16T23:47:00.000-04:00

“Iraq's political leaders emerged Thursday from three days of crisis talks with a new alliance that seeks to save the crumbling U.S.-backed government,” the AP reported earlier this morning.

The “new alliance” they are referring to is between the Shiites and Kurds in the Iraqi government.

And I may ask: What’s new about it?

In January 2005, when the political leaders in Iraq were struggling to form a one-year government, the United Iraqi Alliance [Shiite] and the Kurdish coalition, which is made of the two main Kurdish parties the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, announced that they came together to “face the challenges the Iraqi nation is facing,” in Ibrahim Jaafari’s words. In fact, they came together against the Sunnis, as we all saw a few months after that.

The Sunnis at the time boycotted the elections and the government, which made the government pure Shiite and Kurdish.

Then, the Kurdish coalition and the Shiite alliance came together against the Sunnis and the seculars in the elections in December 2005 and “this cooperation and coalition will not be threatened or disrupted by any external pressures,” said Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Shiite alliance at the time. “We will always be together to form a national unity government,” Jalal Talbani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said then.

They came together to face the Sunnis and the seculars and force a Shiite Prime Minster in Iraq. And they succeeded.

Now, they come and form a “new alliance?” and they signed an agreement, again!

The agreement talked about “the necessity of working together to succeed the political process and abide by the political process and the basics of the democratic federal system. To insure the real participation of all the political partners in power and avoid marginalization.”

But the new alliance did not include the Sunnis or the seculars. It just renewed what the Shiites and the Kurds have been doing in the last four years, run a dictatorship.

The Kurds obviously don’t care about what is happening in Iraq because they have their own separate region. Therefore, the real leaders of the rest of Iraq are the Shiites. This is the new “democracy” in Iraq. The Kurds run their region, and the rest is for the Shiites to kill.

I thought the Kurds were calling for a “national unity government.” I thought they made it clear that they were not satisfied with the performance, or lack of it, of Maliki’s government. I really thought something was wrong. Then I noticed something in the agreement:

“And fasten the process of applying article number 140 of the Iraqi constitution.”

Article 140 is the one that calls for the normalization in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and other “disputed areas” and holding a census and referendum in the city that would decide whether Kirkuk to join Kurdistan and be the capital of the region, or stay in the Arabic Iraq.

There you go. It’s all personal interests. Plus, Barzani already enacted the disputed oil law in Kurdistan four days ago without even waiting for the Iraqi parliament to approve it, which is what the constitution demands!

Why every time the Shiite poisonous mullahs claim to be forming a “national unity government” they come out and say “we united with the Kurds?”

Who is counting how many Iraqis have died this year so far? Anybody? Because the government seems to be fine with it and doesn’t have time to discuss the security issue.

You know what’s driving me crazy these days? It is that the world is watching like there is nothing wrong happening in Iraq. It is that the U.S. administration is watching this comedy repeated over and over again and acts like it is not a big deal.

What do we have to say and show to convince people that this government is another dictatorship?

What did we get from this new meeting exactly? I really don’t know. Since January 2005, the Shiites and the Kurds have been united against the rest of Iraq. And today, they announced that they are together against the rest of Iraq. What did I miss?

Apparently, Maliki’s turbaned gang announced it: if you are not Shiite, you don’t get to share power. Only the Kurds are allowed in, and that’s because they are far in the north.

I thought Maliki and Talbani said the meeting of the political leaders this week was aimed at ending tension in the political process and try to find a way to solve the security problems in Iraq. I thought they wanted to form a “national unity government.”

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

Again... and again... and again!

2007-08-13T21:40:00.000-04:00

The Iraqi political leaders met today to create a “national” unity government, again.

This comedy continues, but the Iraqis don’t laugh to it anymore, because it’s become the reason behind the killing of scores of innocents every day.

In early 2005, when Ibrahim al-Jaafari rallied to be the Prime Minister, he called for all the politicians to join him in the efforts to “create a national unity government that serves all Iraqis away from sectarian divisions and ethnic tension.” And during the year he stayed in office, Iraq did never enjoy one day of peace. He empowered the Shiite militias and allowed them to join [not infiltrate as you read in newspapers] the Iraqi security forces, and that’s when the assassinations based on the religious and ethnic identity started. His poor management of the country and ill-intentioned strategy of dealing with the situation in Iraq fueled more Sunni violence and made the division in the Iraqis community even stronger.

And then came al-Maliki, who called for reform in the government and gathered the Kurdish and Sunni politicians around him in what he called “national unity government.” He deliberately ignored the moderate and secular politicians, but no one in the political arena cared, not the Kurds and not the Sunnis because they thought they already got what they wanted. Little they knew that Maliki was going to deny them the power that they killed for, just like he did with the seculars.

Along the past year, when Maliki showed very little cooperation with other factions of the political process and only applied what his Shiite leaders inside Iraq and in Iran ordered him to do, the Sunnis felt the trick. The Kurds did not care that much because they already got Kurdistan, or that’s what they thought.

Then he started to mess up with his own coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance [of Shiites.] He first reclaimed power from those who claim to be independent in the alliance [and I don’t understand how they can be independent if they belong to an alliance!] and then started to support military operations and arrests against Muqtada al-Sadr followers.

Sadr’s people threatened to leave the government; Maliki did not seem to care. Sadr ordered his six ministers in the government to quit, and Maliki said he would decrease the number of ministries in his cabinet to overcome this problem, in a very “democratic” step!

Fadhila party ministers quit.

The Sunnis threatened to quit, Maliki did not seem to care. They quit, he did not seem to care. He decided to run the show with Shiites and Kurds “democratically” in his “national unity government.”

The cabinet lost 15 or 16 of its ministries and Maliki insisted that his government is a “national unity government” and that everyone else is “an outsider influence who want to disrupt the democratic political process in Iraq. Baathihsts and terrorists.”

Then the oil law was put on the table. Maliki opposed it, so it became personal to the Kurds. Only then that the Kurds felt that the government was not a representatives of the Iraqis and that it is not a national unity government. They publicly denounced Maliki’s way of dealing with the situation in Iraq, only after he opposed the law that would serve them the most, the oil law.

Iyad Allwai’s group, the five secular ministers, suspended their participation in the cabinet meetings. And Allawi insisted that his government is a “national unity government.”

Only then, when Maliki did not want to cooperate with the Sunnis and give them more executive power over security issues, and when the Kurds felt threatened by not being able to pass the oil law, and when the Sadr people, Maliki’s main supporters, were arrested and killed by Maliki’s permission, and when Allawi’s people felt that they did not have enough power to actually gain anything from the government, that they felt the government is not a “national unity.”

Over 20,000 innocent Iraqi people killed since Maliki was appointed a Prime Minister did not count and did not give the politicians a clue that it was never a national unity.

Now, they meet again to try to solve the problems. And I don’t know how they will solve them if every one of them wants to stay in his position and would not give up. I don’t know how we can change what is happening in Iraq if Maliki des not want to resign, although every single party in Iraq is asking him to. I don’t know how we can convince the families of the victims of the new democracy in Iraq that what we have is better than Saddam Hussein’s regime, if Dawa party is another bath party but with a different name, with the same crimes though.

What’s even more shameful is that Iran demanded that Iyad Allawi and his groups should not participate in the “national unity” conference. And Maliki could not say a word and Allawi was not invited! And the government did not even try to find excuses or deny the news about the Iranian influence and intervention in Iraqi’s internal issues when it was uncovered in Iraqi and foreign media. The “legitimate sovereign” Iraqi government preferred to be silent.

And what are they going to say in the meeting? I guess: “We decided that every faction of the Iraqi community should have equal opportunity to serve its country. Our brothers and we decided to be one hand to face the challenges facing our beloved country. We will unite our efforts to fight the outsiders, the terrorists, and the Saddamists and baathists who are trying to divide the Iraqis into ethnic and sectarian groups to fuel a civil war. But they will not succeed because this is the new Iraq. The new Iraqi that promotes freedom and democracy and human rights. We will work together to end this violence so our people can enjoy their national unity government.”

Same bullshit we’ve been hearing since Paul Bremer took over from Saddam Hussein.

I don’t know what we are going to tell the Iraqis and the rest of the world when the time for the next elections, 2009, comes and Maliki’s Dawa party decides that “it is not possible to hold elections for security reasons.” What are we going to do if the people in power now never wanted to leave, which seems to be the case now?

What have we done!

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

Nobody cares anymore!

2007-08-05T14:49:00.000-04:00

The situation in Iraq has become so violent and out of control that the government is not even trying to cover it up. And the Iraqis have become such an unwanted breed around the world that the Prime Minister himself felt no shame admitting it that he gave the members of the Iraqi National Team diplomatic passports to reward them for winning the Asian Cup.

The diplomatic passports, or “the red passports” as nicknamed in Iraq, are not disrespected as the regular ones, the green. Because holders of the red passports supposedly represent the Iraqi government, they face less difficulties and don’t waste as much time to get visas.

It is a clear evidence and a huge slap in the face of average Iraqis that the PM goes in public and reward the “Lions of Mesopotamia” by giving them the freedom to travel. What does it mean to give red passports to reward a soccer team? I mean, a reward is to show how grateful a person is, or in this case Iraq is, to its soccer team and that it is trying to give them the maximum appreciation.

But how? By separating the players from the “mob?”

That’s the case in Iraq now. Everyone is looking for the red passports. People exhaust their connections to get one. I know many friends who did everything they could to get jobs with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs just so they can get the diplomatic passports and get a visa to a European country and go to apply for asylum.

The Iraqi Council of Representatives spent days watching TV for news about car bombs, kidnappings, assassinations, bodies found in and around Baghdad and watching reports with numbers of displaced Iraqis increasing by the day, but the elected people’s representatives were busy discussing whether they should issue themselves and their families red passports. And they did, just a week before their “constitutional right” of a month-long vacation. Where are they now? And where are their families?

Did it occur to the Iraqi government that the red passports holders are never coming back to Iraq? Did anyone try to check if the thousands of Iraqi diplomats around the world now are planning to come back to Iraq when their four-year deployment is over, which for hundreds of them is going to be next year? This is a story idea I would love to see developed and published in a newspaper soon. Who is coming back and who isn’t?

A few days ago I had the chance to sit in a room with more than a dozen of democrat Congress members who were discussing the situation in Iraq. For almost two hours, they talked about possible pull out of troops and change the approach that would eventually lead to a withdrawal. No one mentioned the Iraqis at all.

It's become so messy and unorganized that everyone is taking care of themselves, but no one is paying attention that the Iraqis are stuck between the U.S. administration and the Iraqi government on one side and the Sunni insurgency and Shiite militias and other criminals on the other.

Since the invasion, what did the average Iraqis get? I know the parliament members got monthly salaries between $3,000 and $7,000. I know the ministers get monthly salaries of no less than $7,000. I know that most of the diplomats, who came to Iraq after the invasion after decades of “exile,” are living abroad again and when their deployment is over they will go back home, either London or US or Iran or Syria or somewhere else in Europe—like the prime Minister himself.

I also know that the ministers who served under the first Iraqi cabinet in 2004 through early 2005 are outside Iraq now, enjoying the money the inherited from their successor baathists.

But what did my parents, my brothers, my relatives, my friends and 20 million other Iraqis get other than death threats and dark vision of their unknown future?

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

we won, for a change!

2007-07-29T16:34:00.000-04:00

Iraq won the Asian Cup for the first time, beating the three-time champion, Saudi Arabia 1-0. It was also the first time for an Iraqi team to participate in the Asian Cup semifinals in more than 30 years.

It is very rare, if not never, that I get happy notes about Iraq from family and friends. And when it happens, I always think that it is not going to last, because usually something bad or violent happens before we can enjoy the slight happiness and draw a smile on our faces.

This morning, I was walking in the streets of Washington DC when I received this message on my phone: “Mabrook foz el montakab.”

It was from my friend, Ban, who moved from Baghdad to DC a few months ago. The message said “Congratulations on the victory of the soccer team.”

Now, I’m not a soccer fan at all, but the news cheered me up and made my day. Not because we won a cup, but because I know how happy that made many Iraqis. I know my brothers are very very happy now. I know my mother is laughing and my aunts and cousins are laughing and talking about things that are not car bombs and assassinations for a few hours.

A few days ago, when Iraq won the game against South Korea and came to the semifinals, I got a very touching email from my American friend who lives in Egypt now. After she heard about how the Iraqis went to the streets that day and celebrated the victory, she wrote in the email: “It’s just a tiny thing just one little moment but oh god it just made me want to cry. The beautiful, dear, lovely sweet Iraq I love is there and these people are proof of it.”

The email hurt me to the core because I knew the happiness wasn’t going to last. I knew that in a few hours I will read in the wires that scores of Iraqis were killed while celebrating the news. And her email didn’t forget this fact. She added “I know tomorrow will be back to the same old shit but god, at least for a few hours, people were happy. It makes me so happy to imagine them feeling this joy and dancing in the streets even if for just a moment. It also makes me even more determined that we are going back Amouri! We are going back and no one will stop us ok?” [Amouri is my nickname]

A few minutes later, I refreshed the wires window, and there it was “car bombs kill more than 50 Iraqi soccer fans.

Today, I know for sure bombs will end the Iraqis happiness over winning the cup. But to hell with sorrows even just for a few minutes, just one entry. I want to write something happy about Iraq because I am tired of sad news and I am tired of talking about turbaned snakes and politicians.

I actually got emails from friends overseas congratulating me. For once, I felt like a normal citizen of this globe. People emailed me not to talk about the last casualty number or the last development in the idle political process in Iraq, but to say congratulations. Oh people how much I miss this word.

“Hi Champion - Congratulations from Jerusalem!” said one of my friends and professors.

“IRAQ WINS IRAQ WINS IRAQ WINS!!” said the subject of another email from my American friend in Cairo. “Mabruk alayhom!!” the message said, congratulations to them, "it's the best news ever. I hope they are celebrating in the streets again!”

“A million mabrook for the Iraqis,” said my cousin in UAE in a message he sent to dozens of friends and family on Yahoo! Messenger.

“Crowds of ecstatic Iraqis wept tears of joy and fired rifles into the air on Sunday after their soccer team's victory in the Asian Cup triggered the biggest street celebrations since the fall of Saddam Hussein,” Reuters reported.

In Iraq, thousands of people including members of the security forces defied a government ceasefire order to welcome the victory with a barrage of gunfire,” Bloomberg reported.

Ahhhh, it is delicious the taste of happiness.

Congratulations for every Iraqi in and outside Iraq. Let’s have the day off. Let’s not think about bombs and civil war today, these things are always there waiting for us. But today, this hour is precious. Happiness is visiting us. Let’s welcome it.

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

How Can We be So Blind?

2007-07-21T14:44:00.000-04:00

When did the dictatorship return to Iraq?
Why no one is writing about it?
Is it too much of a dark side of the post-war Iraq?
But then what isn’t!

It is not a secret, and definitely not an opinionated judgment, that the Maliki government has failed to deal with the situation in Iraq.

We certainly do realize how much the politician inside and outside the government are facing, but isn’t that why the Iraqis voted for them in the first place; to face the difficulties and bring Iraq to the other end, where there is hope and future? Are they at least trying to help?

Listen to this: The Iraqi Parliament, after long discussions and several days of debates, decided to issue diplomatic passports to its members and their families! Is this what the rest of the 20 million Iraqis inside Iraq and the three to four million displaced citizens are waiting for?

Yes, our lives just got better and we feel much more safer because our representatives in the parliament and their families got diplomatic passports [the red ones] so they can get visas to Europe and apply for asylum. What more a faithful citizen could wish for!

After the elections in December 2005, most of the Iraqis, politicians and average citizens, agreed that former Prime Minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, was a total failure and couldn’t head the new elected government. Therefore, several alternatives were nominated for the post.

The candidates included Adil Abdulmehdi, a leader in the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq [at the time was the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI], Nadeem al-Jabiri, a leader in Fadhila party and Hussein al-Shahristani, an Islamist who claims to be independent.

All the candidates, who had a chance to win, were Shiite Islamists. According to our new constitution of democracy, the Prime Minister should always be nominated by the group that holds the biggest number of seats in the parliament. And that was played really well because, logic says, those groups are the Shiite Islamic groups. [Although I have to say that Abdulmehdi is somehow a moderate, who’s been a communist and a baathist before joining SCIRI in the late 1970s or early 1980s!]

So, now because of the constitution, even if there are Sunnis or Kurds or Christians or any other minorities, who are more qualified for the position, we cannot vote for them to lead our government because the constitution states clearly that the poisonous Mullahs, Ali al-Sistani, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, Jaafari and Sadr, get to choose, and they will never accept a non-Shiite candidate.

Therefore, there were months-long sessions in the parliament and among the political leaders after the elections to decide who should be the new Prime Minister. But Jaffari, who is also the leader of the Islamic Dawa Party, insisted that he should be the Prime Minister, otherwise you are threatening the unity and security of Iraq,” he repeatedly said in public.

Wasn’t that a clear threat to “democracy”? How did we miss that?

Finally, they got to convince Jaafari to accept that number two man in Dawa Party and his deputy, Nouri al-Maliki, who at the time went by the name Jawad al-Maliki, be the PM.

Maliki also was one of the leaders of the Debaathification Committee.

They kept in the family. Didn’t they? And they refused to even think about another candidate.

When there were rumors that some secular politicians were trying to oust Maliki and take over the government, Maliki got all defensive and went on TV and all news outlets threatening that violence will increase and there will be a wide scale civil war in Iraq if the seculars tried to manage a coup d'état. He insisted that his government is “the unity government” even if half the Iraqis don’t want it. He called the seculars “traitors and supported by outsiders” as if he was seated only because the Iraqis wanted him and his protection force is not provided by Black Water.

When there were talks that some Iraqi politicians were trying to convince the U.S. administration to help them replace Maliki with someone else who can actually lead a government, he repeated his threats over and over.

A few weeks ago, when the Sadr group pulled its five ministers from the government and the Sunnis threatened to pull their ministers too to protest the malfunction inside the government and the inability to serve people, Maliki insisted that his government is “the national unity government and is what the people want” and that the ministers are only trying to “disrupt the political and democratic process in Iraq.”

Instead of listening to his ministers points of view and instead of listening to people, he decided to decrease the number of ministries in his cabinet “for the sake of Iraq and to provide better service.” But in fact, the announcement was only to show anyone who disagrees with him and with Dawa party that “if you are not with us, we can replace you. Or even better, we will pretend you didn’t exist!”

How did we miss that? Why no one wrote about his announcement to form a new government with less ministries? That means that he is getting rid of those who oppose him and his party. How did not we call that dictatorship?!

A few weeks ago, most members of the Iraqi Parliament voted to fire the parliament speaker, Mahmood al-Mashhadani. Mashhadani on his turn went on TV and newspapers and threatened that “there will be a civil war in Iraq and the political process will be paralyzed” if they fire him. Even when his own group, the Iraqi Accordance Front, the biggest Sunni group in the government, asked him to retire, he insisted that he is the only one to head the parliament.

They agreed to put him back, although most of the members don’t want him and don’t want to work with him!

The politicians in Iraq think that the inherited their positions from the years “of struggle” against Hussein’s government. They really believe that no one deserves to be a Prime Minster unless he is a member of Dawa Party, or at least a member of the Shiite alliance, because they all spent most of their lives “struggling” against Hussein and his regime in London, Syria, Iran, U.S.A. and other places.

They do believe that the president should be Talbani and the president of Kurdistan should be Masoud Barzani, because they fought against Saddam Hussein, even if Barzani did call Hussein’s republican guards to murder Talbani’s people, fellow Kurds, in the 1990s. They really believe that the parliament speaker should always be Sunni and a member of the Accordance Front, just because they have tries to the insurgents and can fight in the streets.

Are there no other Iraqis who struggled under Hussein’s regime that are qualified to lead Iraq? When did it become a family issue to appoint ministers and leaders in the government?

Is not this what Saddam Hussein did for 25 years or am I mistaken?

We are looking at history repeating itself and no one wants to admit it because it is too harsh. We are so brainwashed that we look at another copy of a baathist government, but renamed, and cheer for it and call it “democracy.”

How don’t we realize that the governing system in Iraq is a dictatorship, when the prime minister and the parliament speaker threaten a civil war if they were replaced, even when most of the government members don’t want them? Is it because their name is not Saddam Hussein and their party in not the Arab Baath Socialist Party?

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

Another loss along the way

2007-07-13T10:40:00.000-04:00

He was amazing. I never saw him without the beautiful smile on his face. When we reported on news conferences, we joked about the government and what it had to say. We were always sure that there was nothing in the conference that would help the Iraqis. We always thought the conferences were made to fill our newspapers only.

Although he worked for another newspaper, a competition to the one I work for, we never felt competing with each other. He called me to check quotes, he asked me to send him transcriptions. And I did.

One time, I sent him a news conference report that I prepared, but took off the quotes I got from the government spokesperson replying to questions I had asked him afterworlds. I was going to use them in my story and I wasn’t sure I should give them to others, plus they weren’t part of the conference. I called him and said “listen, I sent you the report but I didn’t send you the quotes I got after the conference. Is that ok?”

“One day, you will be shot in the street. I’ll come to you, take the phone and call the police. And then I will leave you there. Is that ok?” He asked, laughing loud.

We both laughed. I told him what the quotes were and asked him not to use them because we cannot use the same quotes that weren’t in the conference. He agreed.

When he was sent to Anbar, the restive province in western Iraq, to report for a few weeks, he called me almost every day to tell me that “it is very dangerous. I don’t think I will come back safe.” But he always laughed and joked before we ended the conversation.

When I told him what “Feeh” meant, he didn’t get it. But that’s how we ended our phone calls. Even the one a few weeks ago, when he called to talk about something private, he said “feeh” at the end. He said “I didn’t forget.”

He was a brave, professional journalist and a human being. That’s why they killed him.

Here is the New York Times story about him. He was killed today. No one knows who killed him, but I do know that the perpetrators are still at large and will be always. It’s the “new Iraq.” It’s freedom.

Iraqi will always miss you Khalid. You won’t miss anything. But we will miss you.
Feeh Khalid. Feeh

What Do You Say Now!

2007-07-12T12:05:00.000-04:00

When I included in my “Iraq, Plan B” entry that the government should “execute” a number of the insurgents and militants who, years ago, were arrested and convicted for killing innocent Iraqis and are still in prisons, many readers complained that the move won’t be “just” or “democratic.” Although the Iraqi constitution, which is widely believed was written by Americans, stays clearly that those involved in mass killing of Iraqis can face the “death sentence,” readers thought it isn’t that right thing to do because it will show “cruelty and abuse of human rights.”

Here is an article, Fifty US veterans describe atrocities against Iraqis, that quoted dozens of American service members in Iraq describing how they execute their mission in the country.

It will show you that what I suggested--A trial that can determine someone is an insurgent or not and then give them the punishment they deserve according to the Iraqi constitution and criminal law, is much much more legitimate and lawful.

And here are more names and quotes conducted by the same journalist, Leonard Doyle:

'It would always happen. We always got the wrong house...'
"People would make jokes about it, even before we'd go into a raid, like, 'Oh fuck, we're gonna get the wrong house'. Cause it would always happen. We always got the wrong house."
Sergeant Jesus Bocanegra, 25, of Weslaco , Texas 4th Infantry Division. In Tikrit on year-long tour that began in March 2003

"I had to go tell this woman that her husband was actually dead. We gave her money, we gave her, like, 10 crates of water, we gave the kids, I remember, maybe it was soccer balls and toys. We just didn't really know what else to do."
Lieutenant Jonathan Morgenstein, 35, of Arlington , Virginia , Marine Corps civil affairs unit. In Ramadi from August 2004 to March 2005

"We were approaching this one house... and we're approaching, and they had a family dog. And it was barking ferociously, because it's doing its job. And my squad leader, just out of nowhere, just shoots it... So I see this dog - I'm a huge animal lover... this dog has, like, these eyes on it and he's running around spraying blood all over the place. And like, you know, what the hell is going on? The family is sitting right there, with three little children and a mom and a dad, horrified. And I'm at a loss for words."
Specialist Philip Chrystal, 23, of Reno , 3rd Battalion, 116th Cavalry Brigade. In Kirkuk and Hawija on 11-month tour beginning November 2004

"I'll tell you the point where I really turned... [There was] this little, you know, podgy little two-year-old child with the cute little podgy legs and she has a bullet through her leg... An IED [improvised explosive device] went off, the gun-happy soldiers just started shooting anywhere and the baby got hit. And this baby looked at me... like asking me why. You know, 'Why do I have a bullet in my leg?'... I was just like, 'This is, this is it. This is ridiculous'."
Specialist Michael Harmon, 24, of Brooklyn , 167th Armour Regiment, 4th Infantry Division. In Al-Rashidiya on 13-month tour beginning in April 2003

"I open a bag and I'm trying to get bandages out and the guys in the guard tower are yelling at me, 'Get that fuck haji out of here,'... our doctor rolls up in an ambulance and from 30 to 40 meters away looks out and says, shakes his head and says, 'You know, he looks fine, he's gonna be all right,' and walks back... kind of like, 'Get your ass over here and drive me back up to the clinic'. So I'm standing there, and the whole time both this doctor and the guards are yelling at me, you know, to get rid of this guy."
Specialist Patrick Resta, 29, from Philadelphia , 252nd Armour, 1st Infantry Division. In Jalula for nine months beginning March 2004

'Every person opened fire on this kid, using the biggest weapons we could find...'
"Here's some guy, some 14-year-old kid with an AK47, decides he's going to start shooting at this convoy. It was the most obscene thing you've ever seen. Every person got out and opened fire on this kid. Using the biggest weapons we could find, we ripped him to shreds..."
Sergeant Patrick Campbell, 29, of Camarillo , California , 256th Infantry Brigade. In Abu Gharth for 11 months beginning November 2004

"Cover your own butt was the first rule of engagement. Someone could look at me the wrong way and I could claim my safety was in threat."
Lieutenant Brady Van Engelen, 26, of Washington DC , 1st Armoured Division. Eight-month tour of Baghdad beginning Sept 2003

"I guess while I was there, the general attitude was, 'A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi... You know, so what?'... [Only when we got home] in... Meeting other veterans, it seems like the guilt really takes place, takes root, then."
Specialist Jeff Englehart, 26, of Grand Junction , Colorado , 3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry. In Baquba for a year beginning February 2004

"[The photo] was very graphic... They open the body bags of these prisoners that were shot in the head and [one soldier has] got a spoon. He's reaching in to scoop out some of his brain, looking at the camera and smiling."
Specialist Aidan Delgado, 25, of Sarasota , Florida , 320th Military Police Company. Deployed to Talil air base for one year beginning April 2003

"The car was approaching what was in my opinion a very poorly marked checkpoint... and probably didn't even see the soldiers... The guys got spooked and decided it was a possible threat, so they shot up the car. And they [the bodies] literally sat in the car for the next three days while we drove by them.
Sergeant Dustin Flatt, 33, of Denver , 18th Infantry Brigade, 1st Infantry Division. One-year from February 2004

"The frustration that resulted from our inability to get back at those who were attacking us led to tactics that seemed designed simply to punish the local population..."
Sergeant Camilo Mejía, 31, from Miami , National Guardsman, 1-124 Infantry Battalion, 53rd Infantry Brigade. Six-month tour beginning April 2003

"I just remember thinking, 'I just brought terror to someone under the American flag'."
Sergeant Timothy John Westphal, 31, of Denver , 18th Infantry Brigade, 1st Infantry Division. In Tikrit on year-long tour beginning February 2004

"A lot of guys really supported that whole concept that if they don't speak English and they have darker skin, they're not as human as us, so we can do what we want."
Specialist Josh Middleton, 23, of New York City , 2nd Battalion, 82nd Airborne Division. Four-month tour in Baghdad and Mosul beginning December 2004

"I felt like there was this enormous reduction in my compassion for people. The only thing that wound up mattering is myself and the guys that I was with, and everybody else is damned."
Sergeant Ben Flanders, 28, National Guardsman from Concord , New Hampshire , 172nd Mountain Infantry. In Balad for 11 months beginning March 2004

“Soft Partition” of Iraq!

2007-07-07T11:56:00.000-04:00

A new report for a “plan B” in Iraq was released Thursday calling for a “soft partition” of the country to restore stability.

The report, The Case of Soft Partition in Iraq, was prepared by two fellows from The Johns Hopkins Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and the Brookings Institution. It came in 41pages, including three maps to outline the provinces, the oil infrastructure in Iraq and the “sectarian map of Baghdad” to support their proposal.

“Soft partition in many ways simply responds to current realities on the ground,” said the two researchers in their summary. “If carefully implemented, it would help end the war and the enormous loss of life on all sides.”

The proposal calls for three regions to be recognized in Iraq; Kurdistan [which already exists,] Shiastan and Sunnistan [in their words.] In order to succeed, it will need to relocate an estimated two to five million Iraqis within the country and provide them with jobs, housing and means of life. The new Iraq will be three governments, with no significant central power and the name “Iraq” is most likely to disappear making the way to the new “stans.”

Edward P. Joseph, one of the researchers, is a visiting scholar lecturer at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins Univ. Earlier in his career, he said, he served for 10 years in the Balkans with the UN. His only knowledge about Iraq came from a visit to Baghdad in the fall off 2004 to work for United States Agency for International Development or USAID.

Michael E. O’Hanlon, the other researcher, is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and specializes in U.S. national security. His knowledge about Iraq comes from working for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in former Zaire! Well, he has no knowledge about Iraq. Nevertheless, he is a senior author of the Iraq Index with Jason Campbell since 2003.

Joseph said that he got a “clue” on how the partition of Iraq would be “the only hope for avoiding an all-out-civil war” when he was talking to ONE Iraqi Shiite politician in Baghdad.

Joseph’s “clue” was confirmed observation: the Iraqis have chosen partition “in their voting patterns, when they not only had indorsed in two free election in 2005 sectarian religious parties, you have to bear in mind they rejected no-sectarian national alternatives,” he said.

This “observation” shows the total ignorance in Iraq’s background and situation now. He totally ignored the fact that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, which he mentioned in his remarks, did not only accept, but also encouraged the United Iraqi Alliance [Shiites main bloc] to use his name in their political campaign. They used his name, picture and statements to appeal to the Iraqis, who were fed up with politics and have turned to the mysterious power of their “God” to help them. Therefore, they voted for Imam Hussein, Imam Ali and Imam whatever to help them, not to Hakim and Jaafari. They voted for Muslim Imams, not Shiite Imams.

I do understand the idea of partition. Iraq is already divided into Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni area now. Baghdad is. And I do think that’s the way to go in Iraq now, at least for the next 50 years. But it needs to be taken seriously and not by people who don’t understand the country and the culture.

O’Hanlon gave seven points of implementation, which he said will be very necessary for the project to succeed.

He said that the U.S. troops level will have to stay in the range of 150,000 in the country for all 2008 to help implement the other points. But “we do believe that if the Iraqis really agreed to this… it could lead for a major reduction in violence,” which would eventually lead to reduction in troops level. That would take 12 to 18 months, he said.

Other elements, he said, would be to relocate people, help them start “new lives,” sharing of oil revenue, issuing new ID cards for people so “Qaeda cannot infiltrate,” into the cities, build new regional institutions, especially security forces and drawing regional boundaries, which he said could start by using the “natural boundary” of the Tigris river to split Baghdad into a Shiite and a Sunni regions!

The security forces will be based on sectarian backgrounds: Shiites will protect Shiite areas, Sunnis will protect the Sunnis and the Kurds will continue to protect themselves.

“That is a formula that seems to work,” said O’Hanlon.

When asked about the role of Iran in the plan to divide Iraq and whether he thought Iran would welcome the idea, Josephs said that “we are stuck with the fact that Shiite aspirations have been unleashed.” But, he added, Iraq will not be in the position of a chaotic battle of Shiites and Sunnis, and at the same time has a massive Iranian influence, because “you cannot have both scenarios at the same time. They are mission exclusive.”!!!! Just to show you how much he doesn’t know about the region.

One of the most ridiculous questions asked by the audience was “how about annexing some of Iraq to adjoining countries, for example: the western side with the nomadic tribal ties to Jordan… is that a possibility?”

Even more ridiculous was the answer: “if the Sunnis electively decided to join Jordan and Jordan wanted them in, the whole spirit of our proposal would be ‘OK’ if they really want that. They are making the decision.”

When people asked about the minorities, like Turkumans, Christians, Yazidis and others and what would happen to them. The answer was “leave to Kurdistan.”!!

Although the two men insisted that the Iraqis will have to decide what to do and to implement the plan, if agreed on, and kept repeating that “in the end, this must be an Iraqi decision. We cannot do it,” there was no Iraqi official in the audience and there was no evidence in the report or in their remarks that any of the two spoke to an Iraqi official since 2004.

It is clear that the report was based on no facts, no studies and no knowledge of the subject under discussion. It was obvious that the two researchers did not do their research and knew nothing about Iraq and Iraqis. It is an immature, poorly constructed stack of papers that included nothing useful but the original map of Iraq.

It was clear that Josephs and O’Hanlon had no desire to help Iraq or Iraqis and they didn’t feel the shame to declare that to the audience.

“Frankly, I think about Iraq at this point in strategic terms only. This is a plan to help our own interests,” in the region, O’Hanlon said.

To read the report, click here.

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

Khaleena Wara Elchathab Lbab Elbait!

2007-07-03T21:36:00.000-04:00

[The title is roughly translated “Let’s give the liar one more chance.”]

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced yesterday that he is going to form a new government to “overcome the difficulties” his current government is facing. And in a very tricky way to expel the Sunnis from the government, the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite’s biggest bloc in the government is discussing the possibility of shrinking the number of ministries in Maliki’s cabinet. By doing this, Maliki will not have to replace the six Sunni ministers who suspended their work last week.

Also, Maliki announced that he is going to form a new “anti-terrorism” force to help deal with the situation in the country.

I was wondering: What happened to the force he already had?

He also announced that the Kurds and the Shiites are working to form a new “national front” to work on solving the problems they are facing in the political process. Sources from the Shiite and Kurdish side said they are trying to outreach the Iraqi Islamic Party, one of the most powerful Sunni groups in the country, to join the new front.

I was wondering: Isn’t that what we’ve been hearing for the last three years? Wasn’t the “national front” the base of Ibrahim al-Jaafari government? And wasn’t it the seed for Maliki’s government too?

I was in Iraq and I covered the news of “uniting all the parties and efforts to sever the people of Iraq.” What happened? And why should we believe that they are going to succeed this time? They will not succeed because the goal is not to help the Iraqis. Rather, the goal is to gain more time while the Sunni insurgents and the Shiite militias do the main task; that is killing more of our youth to destroy the country and its future for the next 50 years.

I was thinking about the committees and investigations that the Iraqi governments have formed and promised to conduct since the invasion in 2003 to “help the Iraqis and bring them justice.”

Here is what I remembered:

Ibrahim al-Jaafari formed a committee to investigate the “bridge incident” in August 2005 in which more than 800 Iraqis died.

He ordered an investigation after U.S. troops uncovered a secret prison that was maintained by his ministry of interior, where they found about 200 malnourished detainees bearing signs of torture.

He also ordered an investigation in the kidnapping of 50 private security details in the middle of the day from their offices in Zayouna in central Baghdad back in 2005.

He ordered an investigation in the first bombing of the Askariya shrine in February 2006.

Maliki ordered an investigation in the kidnapping of at least 70 people from a building belonged to the ministry of Higher Education in Baghdad in November 2006. They arrested six police officers in the aftermath of the incident.

What happened in these investigations?

That’s the kind of government the Iraqis have to put up with! What has it achieved for them? Why shouldn’t they be able to choose another government?

Whenever some Iraqi political group complains that the government incapable of serving the people, Maliki comes on TV and threatens instability in Iraq if anyone wanted to change the government.

What happened Dawa party? Wasn’t that the reason why you conducted the assassination attempt against Saddam Hussein in 1982? Wasn’t it because Hussein wouldn’t give the seat up?

Hussein also formed investigation committees and executed people and awarded his security officers. What’s the difference now?

History repeats itself and no one wants to recognize this fact.

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

You are Welcome to Write Here!

2007-07-01T18:50:00.000-04:00

I have been thinking for a long time now of a way to include more writers on this blog. The idea is to present to the readers more than one voice to discuss issues related to Iraq, the United States and the Middle East.

I think it will be very interesting to see how writers will interact with each other through the issues they will choose to write about.

Like when I added Ali to 24 Steps to Liberty, I would like to invite you to come and write your own posts and 24 Steps to Liberty will publish them. The new addition to 24 Steps to Liberty is Visiting Writers.

24 Steps to Liberty guarantees to you that your pieces will not be changed or added to. Entries written by those with English as a second language, like myself, will be edited IF NEEDED, but will not lose their voice.

How to join us?

On the right side of the screen, under Read Ali’s Blog, you will find a link to 24 Steps to Liberty Code of Ethics. Please read before you send any contributions to this blog.

How to read other writers entries?

Under Code of Ethics, there will be a link to Visiting Writers. You can click on it and will be able to read all the entries.

All are invited.

Our first visiting writer is Yasmine, who is an Iraqi woman living currently in Amman-Jordan.

Who are they Kidding!

2007-06-28T00:26:00.000-04:00

A bipartisan congressional group has released a report on the capability of the Iraqi forces, which the United States alleged to have spend $19 billion on recruiting, training and equipping, The Washington Post reported.

The report found that the Pentagon "cannot report in detail how many of the 346,500 Iraqi military and police personnel that the coalition trained are operational today.”

To that, I would like to respond.

Let’s see, and I’ll take recent examples:

On June 19, the US forces launched yet another military offensive in the city of Diyala in eastern Iraq. The offensive was meant to repress the group al-Qaeda in Iraq, which in recent months has taken the city as a safe haven. The Post reported that “about 10,000 soldiers” are involved in the offensive, officially dubbed “Arrowhead Ripper.”

The operation started “with a quick-strike nighttime air assault" by the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, a U.S. military statement said, the Post reported.

“Air assault,” have you noticed?

The Post also quoted an American commander as saying that the streets of Diyala are carpeted with bombs that are capable of destroying U.S. armored vehicles—vehicles that the Iraqi army doesn’t even have now.

What are the results of the operation? More deaths and more instability in the country. What have this major power achieved? Nothing.

How in God’s name do we dare to ask the Iraqi army to fight an insurgency that has cost the strongest military machinery in the world 2929 casualties in hostile action?

Any military operation in Iraq now depends on fighter jets, remote-controlled missiles and high technology.

Do we know what the Iraqi army is equipped with? I do:
AK47 rifles, pistols, 7.62 mm PKMS (BKC) Machine Gun, M16 [recently given to some soldiers] and less than a 100 humvees.

Do Iraqi soldiers have armored vehicles? No.
Do they have flack jackets? No.
Do they have night vision goggles? No.

The report also said that the US has spent $19 billion in recruiting, training, equipping and building training facilities.

What training? This is the army that fought eight years with Iran, invaded Kuwait, oppressed the Shiites in the south, killed the Kurds in the north, failed coups in the west and protected a dictatorship for more than 30 years. Train it to do what?

And who got the money? American contractors, right? [in Iraqi we say Hasna Jabata… Hasna Akhthata, roughly translated: Hasna brought it and Hasna took it back.]

What training facilities? They are using the old Iraqi camps. And we have more than enough. The whole country was turned into a bunker!

What equipment? The AK47s are the same ones Iraq had before the war. The BKCs? They are the same. Pistols? How many factories have they built with $19 billion!

"We have no idea what our $19 billion has gotten us," Rep. Martin T. Meehan (D-Mass.), chairman of the Armed Services subcommittee on oversight and investigations, told the Post.

Well, neither do Iraqis Meehan.

He said that the States spent $55,000 on each of the 350,000 Iraqi soldiers!

How can we ask the “Iraqi army” to fight insurgents and take responsibility if they are not equipped well enough?

The American military power was not able to quell the violence in Iraq and that’s why I believe Bush increased the number of U.S. troops in Iraq by 28,500 to total up to 150,000. if 150,000 best trained and best equipped soldiers in the world cannot do it, how can Iraqis do it?

The Iraqi army has to be equipped with the proper weaponry to perform properly. It just logic.

Some U.S. officials and citizens argue that they cannot trust Iraqis with weapons, and to that I say “end of discussion.” Because if they don’t trust the Iraqi army and that’s why they don’t equip it with what is needed, there is no way we can get out of this situation.

If the argument stays in the “I don’t trust you” and “you don’t trust me” area, it will never be resolved. Something has to change to make it work and that is the policy with which we are conducting our actions.

Calling for the Iraqi army to take responsibility is an offensive joke, I believe. It is like saying “take it. You will fail and I will be back.”

What are they doing? Showing the world how incapable the Iraqi army is? Well, it is their make.

If anyone argues that the U.S. has spent money on building an Iraqi army and equipping it, I will say “does it have fighter jets? Does it have helicopters? Does it have armored vehicles? Do the soldiers have flack jackets?” if one thing is missing, then there is no army. Very simple.

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

2007-06-24T12:45:00.000-04:00

I would like to announce that another writer is joining 24 Steps to Liberty.

Ali is a 17 years old Iraqi, who was born in a Baghdad prison because his parents were political prisoners at the time he was born. He just came to the States in August. He will tell you his story, but I wanted to say this about him:

He is very mature. I haven’t met him in person yet, but we spoke on the phone a lot and we discussed issues like Iraq’s politics, the situation in the country and what should be done next. What struck me in Ali is how logically he discussed Iraq. He is only 17 years old, but who am I to judge. I wanted it to share his stories and thoughts with you. And you will decide.

The idea is to present another point of view. A teen-ager who was born and lived in Baghdad. Because you have very well received 24 Steps to Liberty and encouraged me to continue writing on it, I thought that I shouldn’t keep it to myself. I wanted to share it with other Iraqis.

I promised Ali that I will not change anything in what he writes. The ideas will come from him, unless he wants help. As long as he is not offending the readers and stays balanced in what he presents, he is welcome to write on this platform.

You are invited to suggest ideas to Ali to write about.

How to read Ali’s posts?
Call up 24 Steps to Liberty on your screen; scroll down a little bit; Under the "Most Debated Entries" link on the right side of the screen, there is a picture of Ali; Click on the picture and it will take you to his window on 24 Steps to Liberty.

Feeh

Painting by Iraqi Artist Betool Fekaiki

The Results of Democracy!

2007-06-16T15:11:00.000-04:00

I was struggling the last few days not to write something political about the situation in the Middle East these days. But I eventually gave up because the temptation is much stronger than I am.

In Iraq, the Parliament agreed to oust its speaker, Sunni Arab Mahmood al-Mashhadani, because he is impolite when dealing with his colleagues and is not trying to change, several parliament members said.

This issue became the most important in Iraq in the last week or so.

Because we have “democracy” in Iraq, every side was empowered. Everyone single ethnic and sectrain group in the parliament has the power to ruin the country now, and they have succeeded and will succeed more.

Naturally, Mashhadani refused to leave or resign. He obviously inherited the seat from his father and his grandfather! He forgot that Iraqis risked their lives and faced death just to go out and cast a vote in the ballot so they can have a government that represents them. He forgot that Iraqis gave up to the invasion because they were fed up with a president that never wanted to leave, so they wanted to never be in this situation again. They wanted to be able to throw a government when they feel it is not serving them.

He forgot all that and instead threatened to appeal to the Federal Court. His group, the Accordance Front, Iraq’s biggest Sunni grouping with 44 seats in the 275-seat parliament, has asked him to resign and he refused.

We used to joke that Saddam Hussein inherited Iraq from his mother, Sabha, and he didn’t want to give it up. The exiles, including most of the government’s officials now, have joked about that and criticized Hussein for not wanting to give up the seat. They always told us, the average Iraqis, that there shouldn’t be someone in power for a long time because that doesn’t describe the “democracy” they wanted for Iraq.

There are talks in Iraq that there is a coup being cooked behind closed doors. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has threatened to battle anyone trying to “destroy the unity of Iraq.” He believes that his government is uniting Iraq.

A year and some change ago we cursed Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the former Prime Minister, for not realizing how bad it is in Iraq. After every bombing and dozens of bodies found in and around Baghdad, he would come on TV and promise the Iraqis that “no one will be able to destroy the unity government. They cannot succeed in dividing the Iraqis.” Jaafari sounded so far from reality and was really disconnected from the rest of Iraq sitting inside a palace in the “Green Zone.” Therefore, the Iraqis reelected his group, the United Iraqi Alliance, and agreed to elect his “best man” Nouri al-Maliki. Because Iraqis wanted a change!

The ruins of the Askariya shrine were bombed again. I don’t know what the significance of this incident is when we compare it to the thousands of lives lost every month in Iraq. But some uncivilized, ignorant, scum people started to attack Sunni and Shiite mosques in retaliatory reply to the mosque bombing.

That’s why I am convinced that the fight in Iraq is never about religion, although it would still be silly and nonsense. If it were about religion, how could they attack mosques? It is hatred and revenge and now is the chance to take care of it. We are a nation built on hatred and taught to avenge over the silliest things.

All this fight over power is happening while the Iraqis pay the toll. Still, dozens of Iraqis get killed by car bombs, mortars, assassinations and other civil war violence and more than 40 bodies are found in and around Baghdad everyday.

In the Palestinian territories, Hamas attacked Fatah buildings. The two sides fought and killed each other. President of the “National Unity Government,” Mahmoud Abbas fired the other pillar of this unity, Prime Minister Ismail Haniya. Haniya refused, naturally. Now, they have two governments before they even get a state. There is no state called “Palestine” if you haven’t noticed yet. But there are two governments ready for when there is!

This is the fruit of democracy in the Middle East. This is what happens when we ask a long-time oppressed people to choose. I’ve been saying, and many people who actually know the situation in that part of the world, that this is not the way to install democracy in the Middle East. There should be education first, knowledge, workshops, schools promoting the term “democratic government” before we ask people to vote. No one believed and some people were all angry at how can we oppose installing “democracy” in Iraq and Palestine. And the result is what we are seeing now.

It is so interesting to me to see that the Middle Eastern countries that publicly opposed the idea of a State of Israel before are the ones that have problems now, either political or economical problems or terrorism. Only them. Let’s see: Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon [Hezbollah,] Yemen and the Palestinian territories. Anyone else? No. it’s a good way to keep them busy I think. A brilliant politician would think this way, to keep their enemy busy and draw their attention to something else to play with. It’s succeeding.

Just a thought!

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

Our Cultures Clashed Yesterday!

2007-05-30T14:03:00.000-04:00

I was reading a story on the front page of The Washington Post, Metro section “Recruiters Come Calling For Talented Minorities” by Nelson Hernandez. The story talked about a high school student in DC who “leads an exalted life.” I was very interested in the title and then the first paragraph. Plus, I know that Hernandez is one of the good young writers at the Post, who has written very good stories from Iraq. So, I wanted to read it.

Two hundred and sixty two words through the story and I got wary.

“Like most students at Flowers, Chin is black. But as far as colleges are concerned, he is pure gold,” the third graph read. That was what made me look around me, I was in a bus, and try to find someone to yell at or take my outrage on. What does it mean to say “but as far as colleges are concerned, he is pure gold?” in my head, this phrase should come after something like this: “Chin is a crippled young man, but as far as …” or “Chin is a criminal, but as far as …” but not “Chin is black, but as far as…” because this way, to me as an outsider, it means that despite the fact that Chin is black, which is not something his colleagues would like, they overcome this fault and consider him as “pure gold.”

And through the story, I was outraged, disgusted and astonished. Phrases and sentences like “Although Chin's father is Asian, his mother is African…” and “About 8,000 seniors, the vast majority of them African American, graduated from the county's public schools last year. Almost half attended a four-year college” and “Like Chin and 96 percent of the students at Flowers, all of these high achievers are black, and they have discovered that they are popular on the college circuit” and “George Washington has focused its attempts to recruit minority students locally. It offers a full scholarship to top graduates of public schools in the District, the majority of whom are black” and other sickening sentences.

Maybe it is the culture in America, but I cannot accept it. Words like “black people,” “African American” and the likes of them don’t appear in my dictionary. Or at least, I don’t like to use them.

Why would I write a story about a brilliant student, like Chin, and keep reminding people of his race. What does race have to do with his achievements? I don’t get it. If I wanted to write a story about this kid, I would write about his achievements and a 17-year-old student who has been accepted to some of the best and most prestigious schools in the States, period.

What’s this “African American” term? Where did it come from? Why I don’t hear something like “Danish American” or “Irish American” or “European American?” Why it is either African American or Arab or Hispanic? America is a place built after the efforts of people from all around the world. When people come here and give it their best chance to serve this country, they should be called Americans, period. Is that crazy talk I am having here, or that’s just the way it should be?

I talked about the story, which is very well written by the way, with one of my American friends. His response was “at least we don’t kill each other,” which only fair given that I was complaining about racism in the States and how we never thought about this in my country. He had to defend his culture. And I understood. But we were having fun and drinking, I didn’t want to go into a serious discussion of the history of the Iraqi culture and how and why it dramatically changed, after imposing the sanctions on Iraq in the early 1990s and after the invasion, in both of which the United States played a key role.

In fact, the first time the Iraqis had to think about shares based on ethnicity and sectarian divisions in forming a government was in 2003, following the orders of Paul Bremer, the American viceroy in Iraq. It was the influence of the American culture.

When I was about five or six years old, my uncle’s wife asked me “are you a Shiite or a Sunni?” I didn’t know what to say, so I went and asked my mother, who told me that “if anyone asked you this question again, say ‘I am a Muslim’.” She went and told my father, who took her and went to my uncle’s house [next to ours] and had a huge fight with my uncle and his wife just because my parents didn’t want us to grow up thinking that there is a difference.

I don’t recall ever talking to my friends about differences between Sunnis and Shiites prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. We had the words “Shiite” and “Sunni” in our conversations, but never in a bad way. Maybe that was the way I was raised up and the way my dozens of friends were too. But they were millions of us in Iraq.

But here, children grow up talking about “white, black, Hispanic, Arab” and other nonsense.

Three years ago an American friend of mine and I were driving through Baghdad going back to the office, where we both worked. As we were driving, she yelled “a black Iraqi! Did you see that?” I didn’t know what she meant. “What?” I asked. She explained that she saw a “black” Iraqi walking in the street and that she’s never seen that before. She asked me if “African-Iraqis” were many and whether they were treated equally or not. I didn’t understand where she was going with her questions, and didn’t know how to answer them.

She then decided to write a story about African-Iraqis. We went to Basra, where most of the Iraqis from African origin live. And it was the most difficult translation I had to do in the last four years. The Iraqis didn’t understand why I asked “were you treated differently under Saddam because of your skin color?” or “how do the light-skinned Iraqis treat you? Equally?” They didn’t understand why we asked about them, when all the Iraqis suffered the same thing. [and I have many stories about reporting for that story that I don’t think it is necessary to tell here]

It is a cultural clash that I wanted to share with you. Maybe I am wrong, and maybe not. But in any case, I can write about it.

Feeh

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

Lost Beautiful Country!

2007-05-22T17:09:00.000-04:00

I was touring Washington DC today. I wanted to get acquainted with the place before I started working.

As I was walking near the intersection of 14th Street and M Street, I noticed that there were flyers on the poles saying “Lost Black Dog” with pictures of the dog and phone numbers to call if the dog was found.

I was reading one of the flyers when I got a great idea. “This is the way I’m going to do it,” I thought. I will post my flyer on my blog and ask people to help me to find what I have lost.

A few years ago, I lost a country. It was called Iraq. It was a wonderful country. It is where I was born and lived my whole life. It had lakes, woods, amusement parks, restaurants, holy sites, marshes and everything. It is a place where I had taken thousands of pictures, literally. And it is where the pictures are still stored. It is a place where my parents and grandparents and great grandparents have lived and wanted to raise their children. It is a place where I learned that what is called Kurdistan now is really “the north of Iraq” and what are called Shiite Imams now are really “our Imams” and what are called Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, Arabs, Christians, and others are really only “Iraqis.”

If you find it or know how to get it back, let me know. I don’t want to spend my life away from it.

Here is the flyer, help me to spread the word.

The video on the Video section is of a song by Iraqi singer Saadoon Jabir. The lyrics say:
He who lost gold can find it in the gold market
And he who was separated from a loved on, maybe will forget him in a year
But he who lost a country, where can he find a country?

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

I Did It My Way!

2007-05-18T03:44:00.000-04:00

It’s been an amazing time here in the U.S.

I finished my first year of school a few days ago and only one more year to go. I am about to embark on a new journey that will take me to Washington D.C. to be a sully equipped reporter in the United States for the first time in my life. I am so excited and overwhelmed in the same time.

I have been through very difficult times in the last nine months. When I came to school, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was like a foreign reporter in a very strange land. After I was the kind in Iraq doing what I liked to do, which is reporting and managing a huge office, I come here with nothing but a pen and a notebook. I was terrified. I always told people that to me it was like an American correspondent going to Iraq with no fixer, driver or knowledge about the place.

A few weeks into school, I got my weekly assignment and it was to write a story about Merrill Lynch allocating a $2 million in grants to 20 non-profit organizations in northern California. The first question I asked was “what is Merrill Lynch?”

The local newspaper didn’t want to publish the story and said that it is of no interest to their readers. I didn’t accept that! So, I went out for a few hours to cover the announcement of the grants and came back and wrote the story, turning it into a local news story by leading with a local organization getting some of the money. You know what happened? The newspaper read my copy and wanted it. They published it!

A few weeks later, I was assigned to cover a Psychic Fair in the city I am living in. I didn’t know what to write about in such events. I went to the web to find more, but I didn’t have time because I was assigned at 7 a.m. and the deadline was 2 p.m. So, I went to the event and started asking questions. The people at the fair didn’t want to answer my questions and asked me not to report in the event. The said that I could come back a week later and ask any number of questions I wanted, but not that day. That didn’t satisfy me. I am a journalist with a deadline. I called my editor and told her that there is no chance I could get a story. She was disappointed and wanted to change the assignment. I asked her to give me 15 more minutes.

I went back and asked the people “what if I sat in a session to heal my aura and took notes and wrote a story. Would that be ok with you?” They agreed. And I sat to get my aura healed. I came back to school with a personal essay that was “the best personal essay I’ve read in school so far,” my editor told me. She said that I’ve “turned something so small into a very well read story.” And I told her “I am a journalist. When I go out, I come back with a story.”

This is the kind of technical difficulties I’ve had. It is a new place. I had no idea what the culture looked like. I didn’t know how to generate ideas for stories and didn’t know what the limits were. Still, I was asked to present as much as the rest of the class. I thought that wasn’t fair because even the best journalists in the States, when they go to Iraq they have fixers and people to tell them what is a story and what is not.

The books I had to read were amazing, but what really pissed me off was that the professors didn’t realize that if an American student needed a day to read a nook, I needed three days to read it because it is a foreign language and no matter how good I am at it, I needed more time to apprehend. I got over that too because I had no other choice.

In addition to all this school stuff, I had to deal with all the news from Iraq. They are personal, you know. I had to read many newspapers a day to keep up with the situation. I had to talk to my family at least three times a week to make sure they were still alive. And if a few days pas and I don’t hear my father or mother or brother over the phone, I immediately thought something has happened and no one told me. I still have to speak to each one of them to make sure they are all still alive.

But after all I did it. I made it through the first year with good grades. Professors always told me that they are “very happy you are here. You are doing great.”

I’ve won two awards, one for “Exceptional Reporting” and the other one was not for journalism, but for my attempts to explain what happened in Iraq and what we should do to make the change and my attempts to bring the U.S. people and the Iraqis to one table in peace. The award was for “Global Citizenship.”

I went through hell, but I survived. And I made many many friends. That is the best payoff ever. I tried very hard to keep a smile on my face no matter what the situation is in Iraq or what I was going through because people have nothing to do with what I am going through. They always treated me well and I wanted to treat them well too. Along the way, I always listened to the song "I did it my way." It was just an interpretation of what I was doing and going through. I love this song.

A few days ago, a friend sent me an email. She was a teaching assistant for one of my main classes. Her email made me very happy. Here is what she said:

“I've come to think of you as the heart of our class because of your amazing perspective and how positive you stay despite or maybe because of all the things that you have to deal with. You really are inspiring, not on the level of being the "celebrity" but as a person and a friend.”

That is amazing. All the hard work was to leave school with this reputation of being a goof person and friend. I did it. I did it my way and I am very happy. I did it my way.

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

Iraq, Plan B!

2007-05-07T21:36:00.000-04:00

For one of my classes, and as a final piece before the end of the year, the two professors asked us to write a piece headlined “Iraq, Plan B.”

The idea is that we are writing an editorial not today, but six months from now. The “surge” is still going. What do we think is going to happen six months from now? Will it be the same, or it will change? And how? What do we think plan B should be for Iraq.

Here is the piece I wrote. I wanted to share it with you. And after six months from now, I will come back to it and remind you and we will see if what I wrote was true!
------

It’s been eight months since the last security plan to secure Baghdad was launched, yet, the U.S. and Iraqi officials are still speak warily of the results and stammer when asked about it. The answers come short of acknowledging any significant difference in casualties on both sides. Yes, they say, car bombs are less in Baghdad and the number of sectarian killings has decreased, but the number of casualties is still high.

In Baghdad, the security plan meant more U.S. troops on the ground, more Iraqi security forces patrolling the streets. Some criticized the plan as providing more targets for the insurgency by spreading U.S. troops in the streets, and this has proved to be true. And many Baghdadis, especially in the Sunni neighborhoods of the capital, are reluctant to cooperate with security forces led by a Shiite government that are vastly Shiites themselves.

The Iraqi police are accused by Sunni government officials of dividing up Baghdad according to sectarian backgrounds and leading the sectarian cleansing, which has claimed thousands of lives since the February 2006 bombing of a revered Shiite shrine north of Baghdad, according to U.S. and Iraq officials. Average Iraqis accuse the police of covering up the Shiite militia’s kidnappings and killings, which make up a notable percentage of the recent casualty numbers from the capital.

When President Bush called for a “surge” of troops into Iraq a few months ago, his plan did not include a timetable. Congress tried desperately to timeframe this “surge” and any future U.S. military involvement in Iraq by passing a bill allowing the flow of funds to U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan but demanding a pull-out from Iraq that woul have started first day of this month. The bill was vetoed by the president, who called for a “clean bill.”

In any case, the “surge” has not achieved what the Bush administration hoped for. Maybe it is true that there are less car bombs in Baghdad, but it is also true that there are more car bombs around Baghdad and the number of civilians killed every day in Iraq is still in the dozens. The average number of bodies found tortured and shot dead and dumped in empty lots in and around Baghdad is still 12 to 20 per day.

The political process in Iraq offers no better news. The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is accused of providing Shiite militias, especially those loyal to firebrand anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, with a safe environment to work with no legal obstacles. Although Maliki repeats his “commitment to quell the violence and bring to justice all the militias and armed groups who killing innocent Iraqis” in almost all his appearances, the political reality from the ground does not allow any steps to be taken against those militias.

The political groups that make up the Iraqi parliament cannot come to an agreement on reconciliation. Iraqis have watched on television the 275-member body struggle to decide whether to start every session with a verse from Quran, the Muslim holly book, or with only the sentence “in the name of God,” even as Iraqis outside the parliament’s dome inside the Green Zone must deal with car bombs, kidnappings, mortar attacks and shortages of electricity and fuel. A bill to organize the flow of oil revenues in the country has been pending for seven months now because the body couldn’t decide who should police the revenues, the federal government or the regional governments-- although there is only one regional government so far in Iraq in the northern region of Kurdistan.

At this point, there is no plan B that can solve the enormous problems in Iraq. If the Bush administration does want to leave Iraq and save face, it has to admit that the plan, if there was one, has not been successful and will not be. There should be a new plan and this time it should include the Iraqis themselves. It has proved fatal that the original plan didn’t include people from Iraq.

Before the U.S. asks the Iraqis security forces to take over the country and be responsible for its security, those forces should be equipped with proper weaponry. How can we ask the Iraqi army to defend its borders when all the soldiers have is AK47s and unarmored pickup trucks? How can we ask them, with their 7mm pistols, to face an insurgency that has weapons that can pierce the thickest armored vehicles the U.S. Army and Marines have and caused more than 3000 deaths to the most powerful military machine in the world?

The political arena in Iraq should be remodeled. Clearly, nothing has improved in the lives of the Iraqis since Maliki’s government was seated. It has lost its credibility dramatically over the last year because it has lacked the power to quell the violence and start the long-promised reconstruction. The Iraqi government and parliament should realize not only that the U.S. commitment to Iraq is not an “open-ended,” neither is Iraqis’ patience. The Iraqis have voted for a government to stabilize the country and all they’ve got is more violence and hundreds of thousands more displaced within and outside the country.

We should pay more attention to them. Many Iraqis were motivated to help the multinational forces with post-war Iraq, but they were sent home. The multinational forces and occupation authority in Iraq since day one depended on foreigners and exiles that mostly either have never been to the country, or have traveled to it in the 1980s and 1990s. They have lost the trust and help of Iraqis.

What is the punishment for the insurgents who killed thousands of Iraqis? That is a question the average Iraqi is asking every day. We’ve been hearing about the arrest of insurgents and insurgents’ cells leaders, but then what? Iraqis want to see what happens to those who kill Iraqis. Iraq is a community that has been ruled by dictatorships through history; power is a good word, not a bad one. If Iraqis don’t see that the insurgents are sent to the gallows, as Iraqi law states, they will never trust their government.

Another important factor in this plan is the poorly-invested-in tribal community of Iraq. Since the fist Gulf War, Iraq has slowly turned into a community that is based on tribal traditions and laws. It is known in Iraq that a tribal leader’s word is an order everyone must listen to, or he will be expelled from the tribe, a punishment that could cost someone’s life in the Middle East.

Tribal leaders should be approached more aggressively and asked for their help. If the Iraqi tribal leaders agree to restrain their men and ask them to lay down their weapons, it is most likely a move that could draw some quiet days in Iraq during which the political developments can continue and reconstruction can start.

Along with the iron fist to deal with the insurgents, reconstruction should start to show Iraqis that not only their government ahs no mercy on the wrongdoers, but also is working to reward its people. One of the main problems in the country is housing, although the country has enough lands in the big cities and around them to house millions more. Show the people that the government is working to solve at least one problem. When they see apartment buildings rising in their neighborhoods, they will not be silent when they notice a group of insurgents preparing for a mortar attack on that project. They will weigh it and find that if they prevent the insurgents, they each will have a place to stay in soon.

In country like Iraq, iron fist doesn’t mean dictatorship; it means punishment for the sinners. We are afraid of the international community to criticize a strong government in Iraq and forgetting that with the weak one they have now, the average of Iraqis killed everyday will stay between 60 and 120 people.

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

My Family's First Casualty to the Iraqi Civil War

2007-05-05T15:14:00.000-04:00

Anmar, my cousin, was 23 years old. He left his house a few days ago heading to Syria with two of his best friends, all Sunnis. His plan was to go to Syria, find a big house or apartment, rent it and prepare it for the family to go and live there. He volunteered to go and take care of this issue. Although he was the youngest among my cousins, but he was clever and brave.

Anmar and his friends were stopped by militias a few miles outside Baghdad, the police told my family. No one knows what happened after that, but the bodies were found three days ago in the morgue.

The "surge" is working. This is the fate of the Iraqi youth!

When I talked with my aunt, all she kept saying was “thank God for everything. We still have you and the rest of your cousins. Thank God for everything.”

I will start counting now, one done and no one knows how many to go!

New Orleans Isn't Very Different from Baghdad!

2007-04-30T15:09:00.000-04:00

What shocked me the most in this trip was how the city looked like Baghdad. New Orleans looked like Baghdad after the war in 1991; I swear I kid you not. The devastation, empty houses, the people returning to their life in the city, the “rituals” people practice before they completely come back, the bumps in the streets and the smell of destruction [it has a distinctive smell people. Yes it does.]

I arrived to New Orleans Thursday. On the way to the hotel, I saw the same thing I saw on tv two years ago, destroyed buildings. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Two years later and the scene is the same? Where are we? A government that spent hundreds of billions of dollars on wars overseas is not capable of dealing with a crisis on its own soil! A crisis that all what it needed was money!

Part of what I was supposed to do there is to walk around, talk to people and take picture of houses. My friends [not the ones who I was with there] were worried: a middle eastern in the middle of a southern state! Walking around in empty blocks, where crime rate is still high, ALONE taking pictures of houses?! To them, that sounded scary. At least, they thought, people won’t be friendly or helpful.

I always tell people here, who ask me to be careful because people may not be friendly, “if I am nice to people, there is no reason why they don’t treat me nicely. You get what you give.” This doesn’t seem to convince them, but it works for me.

I got worried, to tell the truth. But it never made me question my trip or hesitate. In fact, when I get worried, I work better.

The first day of reporting was in a shipping center, where we had to approach people and ask them if they lived in the neighborhood we focused on, take their exact address and names. [to me, that sounds weird!]

“Hi, I am a journalist from …… and we are working on a project ….” That was the way I introduced myself to people. I had 15 seconds to convince people, with my accent and “handsome” middle eastern looks, that all I wanted was to help them. The first interview was good. The second was better, the third was even better. All the day was great. People were super nice. They were more helpful than I needed that I had to keep talking to them and lose time because they wouldn’t let go. They kept telling me stories, not necessarily related to the hurricane or our issue of concern, but any stories. I loved that.

What was even better is that people didn’t care where I am from, like everywhere else. All what they cared about is what I was doing and when it will be published.

One woman, after I interviewed her in the parking lot of a huge store, and as she was getting into her car, turned around and asked me “where are you from?” I was like “Uh Oh. Here it comes. That’s what they warned me of and there will be a scene in five seconds.”

“I am from Baghdad. Iraq,” I said.
“Oh, OK. Have a good day sweetheart and good luck with your project,” she replied. “Thanks and you have a good day too,” I said feeling guilty for thinking in my mind, even if for a second, that she was going to be rude. Damn you my American friends, I thought, you should know your people!

Amazing people. Wonderful hospitality. As one of my friends said “there is a reason why it’s called southern hospitality.”

I started to wander in the streets, taking pictures and taking to the very few people, who are either already back or still rebuilding their houses. A very sad experience I had. Some would say “but you are from Iraq, you have even more sad stories.” Yes, that’s right. But that doesn’t mean this is not sad!

Empty houses with graffiti on the facades recording what was found in the house after the hurricane. Several graffiti put the number of people found dead in the house. One said five.

In the mid 80s, there was a big battle between the Iranian and the Iraqi armies in a city called Faw. It is the Iraqi port on the Persian Gulf. The city was flattened and occupied by the Iranian army. A two years later, Saddam Hussein vowed to take it back and he did. Within a few months, the city’s original residents were compensated and rebuilt their city. That was under the rule of a dictatorship.

In 1991, Iraq was destroyed, mainly Baghdad and other big cities like Mosul, Basra. The Americans made sure that the average Iraqis didn’t get water, electricity, or food. And they made sure to also bomb the communication buildings so the average Iraqis didn’t have a way to know about each other and what was going on. Within three months after the end of the war, most of the government building and services, including potable water, sewer system, paving bombed streets, phones and electricity. That was under the rule of Saddam Hussein, whom Bush’s administration accused of depriving his people from their share of oil revenues!

What about people in New Orleans. They don’t have a dictator to rebuild their city. They have a democracy that is fighting its way to spend 100 billion more dollars on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Who will help the people of New Orleans?

The rich in the city had their houses already rebuilt. Beautiful houses the rich have got. And it has nothing to do with race. People from all kinds were still without houses and are still living in trailers, and all kinds of rich people are living in their ivory towers too.

What struck me is that New Orleans people overwhelmingly voted for Bush in 2004! And don’t know why they did that. What were they thinking! As I blamed Iraqis fro what is happening in Iraq, I now blame people of New Orleans for what is not happening now. I blame them for not having adequate funds to rebuild their city and for lack of federal support for the poor, because hey reelected Bush when they clearly saw how his administration managed the country.

And people are still hopeful in New Orleans. It is also one other thing that made me compare Iraq to this city. With all what happened to Iraqis before and now, you still see the majority of Iraqis smile, drink tea over happy conversations and jokes and they are still hopeful and why you ask them why, they say “because it cannot be worse than this.” The people in New Orleans are the same. With all what they’ve been through, they are still hospitable, respectful, have sense of humor and hopeful that the misery they are in is not going to last for ever. And when I asked why they believed that, “I don’t know. Just because,” the reply was!

I went to a gathering of people in which they spoke to a the young director of Public Works. The residents complained about the bumps in the streets in front of their houses. “The street is non existent,” a woman told me. Most of the streets were damaged by construction trucks. One woman said that when it rains, she couldn’t leave here house if she was in, or go back to it if she was out. “My question is: how can I go home when it rains?” she asked the official.

“I know there is damage, I know I have to do something to fix it,” Robert Mendoza, the public works director, said. “But it doesn’t mean FEMA agrees with me.”

The Mendoza started to tell people how he is working very hard to put new street signs in the neighborhood and that it is not easy to do that!

“I don’t care about street signs,” the woman told him in a loud and angry voice, “I know where I live.”

“To FEMA,” one banner on a wall said, “respect our homes.”

I got it now. I know why the invasion of Iraq was messed up and there was no planning for post-war Iraq. The same people that are messing up New Orleans were involved in Iraq. The same officials, contractors and unqualified “experts.”

No wonder why reconstruction in Iraq didn’t start right away after the invasion and why it took so long that it afterwards became impossible because people were already angry and the insurgency was fueled. No wonder why Iraq has deteriorated to what it is now. It is because the people who are involved in Iraq don’t know how to solve problems in their own country or to help their own people. How would they succeed in a country on the other side of the globe?!

Not all my trip was sad. At night, we went to the French Quarter, where all the fun is. If you click on the video section, you will see a street in the French quarter. Crazy. This is another video I want to share with you.

I ate the famous beignet, a lot! I rode the mechanical bull after three or four shots of I don’t know what [I couldn’t care less. It was tasty!] I didn’t last on the bull more than three or four seconds! And this is also another thing that made me compare Baghdad to New Orleans. After every war Iraq has fought, the streets became even more fun than before. After the invasion in 2003, many restaurants reopened and opened and many places were opened for people who wanted to have fun. Not anymore though.

A lot needs to be done in New Orleans. All what it takes is one visit to the city. Bush should go visit the city. But he has to know that it shouldn’t be the same way John McCain visited Baghdad! It should be the way I visited New Orleans. Talk to ordinary people and see what they are going through. He shouldn’t hide in the city hall or wherever he hides every time he pretends to visit a place. Not until officials in this administration stroll in the streets of New Orleans the city is going to get the help it needs.

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki.

Yloosoon Bkharahum! [Messing with their own shit]

2007-04-20T01:37:00.000-04:00

The LA Times today reported that the U.S. Army is erecting a three-mile-stretch wall in Baghdad to isolate the Sunni residents of Adhamiya neighborhood from the Shiites around them. A kind of a “separation wall” in the middle of Baghdad to show where the Shiites are and where the Sunnis.

This is a new fruit of the “liberation” of Iraq. The efforts of Iraqis and the hundreds of thousands of innocents killed are finally paying off. Enjoy it Iraqis, it is formal now. You didn’t want a federal Iraq, now you have a federal Baghdad!

What are they doing? What are the Americans doing in Iraq? Isn’t there anyone to say “No. stop it. It is not how it should be done.” ?!

The reason the U.S. Army put for this wall is that when insurgents conduct their attacks in Shiite neighborhoods, they will have more obstacles to go through before they go back to their bases with the wall installed!

You know, everything is working out very well and the security plan is succeeding, but because the insurgents can flee the bombing scenes fast that they are successful! The wall could have prevented the bombings that killed more than 200 Iraqis yesterday. The wall will prevent Shiite militias from going house to house to kidnap innocents, torture them and kill them. The wall will be a major reconstruction example of rebuilding Iraq. And it will be a good motivation for those who fled the country or were displaced inside Iraq to return to their homes!

What is this wall going to do other than provoke the Iraqis against each other more and more?

Who is going to prevent the Shiite militias from killing the Sunnis then? The victims of terrorism in Iraq are only Shiites?

You still don’t believe there is civil war in Iraq?

Do you still ask “why Iraqis are not happy with what the Americans are doing? Why aren’t they grateful?” how can they be grateful when they see everyday another part of their city that they cannot visit anymore? How can they be happy when they watch their neighborhoods, the places they grew up in and around, being isolated and slowly destroyed?

Is that what the Iraqi government promising Iraq now? Sectarian divisions?

Millions of my people confronted the insurgents and Shiite militias back in Dec. 2005 and went to polling centers to vote for politicians, who the least they promised was “a better future.” Is that how they award the Iraqis who chose to die and not let the terrorists decide what kind of government Iraq gets?

Separation wall? A 12-foot-high barrier! I cant even start talking about this. It stabs me deep in my heart to even think about it. What will the neighborhood be called? “The Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya?” or “The Sunni area of northern Baghdad?”

Adhamiya people are not terrorists. There are terrorists in Adhamiya, yes. But why should the innocent, in addition to their daily miseries, be separated? Why should they feel like they are living in a zoo?

There are terrorists in Kadhimiya, Sadr City, Husseiniya, Palestine Street and other Shiite neighborhoods. Why should Adhamiya get the punishment? Why should the Sunnis get the punishment?

The U.S. administration and the Iraqi government have to know that this will be interpreted, like many other issues before, as a way to oppress the Sunnis and satisfy the Shiites. And this is in my opinion is not true, because the Shiites are getting nothing out of anything the government and the Americans are doing in Iraq. The average Sunnis and Shiites are the only losers in Iraq now. But, everything the Americans and Iraqi government are doing in Iraq now is provoking more and more sectarian divisions and civil war.

It is like they insist on destroying my country. They insist. And they succeed.

Who is advising them? Who is giving them these suggestions? Whoever they are, clearly they are trying to add more and more failure to the U.S. project in Iraq.

Painting by Iraqi Artist Betool Fekaiki

The Circus is Back to Town!

2007-04-12T12:19:00.000-04:00

Muqtada al-Sadr threatened to “withdraw” from the political process in Iraq. Masoud Barzani, president of Kurdistan region, attacked Turkey and accused it of meddling in Iraq’s internal affairs. Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister, was offended and there are talks about arguments in the government about the power of the federal government against the powers of regional governments, which in this case is only Kurdistan.

Jalal Talbani, the President, apologized to the Turkish Prime Minster, which made Barzani comes back and say that he didn’t threat anyone and doesn’t accept threats from anyone.

The Iraqi Islamic Party, one of the biggest Sunni parties in Iraq and a key player in the useless parliament, is threatening again to suspend its participation in the government.

Barzani is calling Kirkuk “an Iraqi city with a Kurdish identity” now. That makes the Arabs and Turkumans furious, but he doesn’t care. He wants to deal with the Kirkuk issue and no one else wants to do it.

Maliki is touring Asia now. You know, Iraq is perfectly happy and stable, so the prime minister is having fun around.

All this is happening when more and more Iraqis are getting killed and bullet-riddled bodies have become the usual findings of every day in and around Baghdad.

I reported on the election campaigns in 2005 and heard and witnessed what the politicians promised the Iraqis if they elected them. Where are they now?

Do you now see why I am frustrated with “democracy?” Do we still believe in “democracy” in Iraq. A democracy that is led by those people. The ones who are living in a world that is totally remote from the Iraqis’ life? We don’t have the right people to rule with democracy now. We need to change the approach.

When are the decision makers going to wake up and listen?

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

Baathists are Iraqis, Like It or Not!

2007-04-02T03:00:00.000-04:00

The Associated Press reported that the Shiites’ top clerics opposed a draft law that was supposed to give hundreds of thousands of Iraqis their jobs back. The law, if enacted, would allow the baathists who were excluded by Bremer’s debaathification decree to come back to their old jobs or at least give them a chance to start a new life.

Apparently, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the top Shiite marjiya, or authority, doesn’t think that the Iraqis, who were baathists, should be allowed to make a living anymore. Ahmed Chalabi, who heads the debaathification committee, met with Sistani and other Shiite marjiya and was quoted in the AP as saying “The grand ayatollahs said it is dangerous for the criminals to return to leading posts in the state.”

The debaathification decree affected Iraqis who were in the fifth rank of the party and above. The party had nine ranks [that I can remember.]

But did Sistani ask himself “who those people are?” They are Iraqis. No matter what he and his alike are trying to do, they are Iraqis and will always be Iraqis. How can they provide their families if they don’t have jobs? How can the government blame them if they collaborate with the insurgents to get some money and feed their children?

No one can deny that the Iraqis had to be baathists to get jobs, especially in the ten years before the invasion in 2003. They had to be at least Muayid, or supporter.

In high schools, the administrations sometimes forced students to enroll in baath party. It happened in my high school: one day the principal came to each classroom and ordered all of us to register our names. Of course I didn’t, but that was because I knew the principal. But many others had to register in the party because if not “you will all fail this year,” the principal said.

Many universities and colleges required baath party registration in order to enroll student, like Saddam University, education college, the medical institute, the teachers institute, the fine arts college, the fine arts institute, the military academy, the police academy, and many others. What could students do? And once you register, they will promote you like it or not and I am a witness on that because I’ve had friends who registered in high school and never thought about it until years later they were told that they are three or four ranks higher!

When I applied to The College of Fine Arts to study pottery and ceramics, which is one of my hobbies, my application was denied because I wasn’t a baathist.

The range of monthly salaries of the average Iraqis was between $3 and $6, in the time when the price of a kilo of sugar was 50 cents. And to get bonuses, the employees had to get promoted in the baath party. Each rank had a price. From Muayid you get to be Naseer then Utho, or member, then Utho Amil or active member, then Utho Shu’ba or class member, then Utho Firqa or division member then Utho Qiyada Qutriya or regional leadership member then Utho Qiyada Qawmiya or national leadership member and I think that’s it.

Most of the Iraqis who were baathists were either active members or class members or division members because that’s when they actually got promotions and bonuses. And we are talking about maximum of $20 a month, no more!

Saddam Hussein’s government put the number of baathists in Iraq to seven million members, although “all Iraqis are baathists even if they didn’t register,” Saddam Hussein always said.

When Bremer issued the decree, it affected millions of Iraqis. They lost their jobs and had no income for months. The ministries couldn’t work because they technically lost every qualified person in Iraq. Who had to join the party? Those who had to be promoted because they were over qualified for their old jobs. And who are they? They are the teachers, principals, engeneers, doctors, managers, general managers and others who knew how things worked in every ministry in the country.

When the U.S. administration realized that the decree was wrong, and that happened very very late as usual, they asked the Iraqi government to issue exceptions and to return some of those who lost their jobs back. I interviewed one official in the debaathification committee when I was in Baghdad and I don’t remember the number of the Iraqis who were still affected by debaathification that he gave me, but it was more than 20,000 and less than 30,000. I remember him saying “it only affects …. That’s all. I don’t know why the Iraqis are upset.”

Only 20,000! Do you know how many families this number makes and how many children?

Plus, I don’t believe that Sistani, the Iraqi government and the American administration are that stupid to believe that the high ranking baathists, who had power to hurt people and benefit from the government, are still in the country. Those who should be affected by the debaathification decree are already outside Iraq, either in Syria or Jordan or the UAE or Yemen, and are living the best life ever using the money they stole from the Iraqi banks and government. Those who should be punished are not in Iraq to be affected by debaathification. They have left in the very early days after the invasion in 2003. Why would they stay?

Sistani wants Iraqis to starve to death now. Why doesn’t he want Iraqis to go back to their jobs? They are Iraqis no matter what anyone in the world thinks. When we don’t allow them to work, that means we are adding to the unemployed, to the poverty level, to the insurgents groups and to the uneducated people in the future of Iraq.

When someone like Sistani and other religious figures go public saying “the baathists don’t deserve jobs,” that actually adds to the turmoil in the country. I cannot help but think that such a move provokes more hatred and sectarian conflict to the civil war that’s already on in Iraq.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the poisonous snake/Mullah and leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, had already asked the Shiites to massacre the baathists. He asked them in public. I wrote an entry about it.

I cannot understand when someone like this Sistani says “no. don’t give them jobs” what do they mean? So, how shall we deal with this unemployed population of Iraq? because it is not enough to say “don’t give them jobs.” We have to deal with the consequences of this decision. Those are not Iranian or Syrians or Egyptians, who if didn’t get jobs in Iraq can go back to their countries. Those are Iraqis.

But how should Sistani know about unemployment and what it means or how hard it is to not have a job and cannot provide a family. He is unemployed and never had to work, yet he gets millions of dollars a year from other people’s hard work. Convenient! A typical decision-maker, who knows nothing about people’s life and the circumstances, and yet get to decide how people should live!

And hey, Sistani, don’t make me start about who is Iraqi and who is not!

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

take24stepstofreedom@yahoo.com

You Still Believe There is No Civil war in Iraq!

2007-03-28T18:20:00.000-04:00

The Iraqi Ministry of Interior has issued a statement to the Iraqi people. Very terrifying words and implications. It said:

“Every day the criminal terrorists prove their brutality and meanness and how they insist on hurting our people using the most brutal means and the dirtiest, trying to cause more casualties among the innocent. Another tool for massive killing has appeared lately; it is using trucks of poisonous chlorine gas and detonating them amongst people and in places that are crowded with innocent people. The Ministry of Interior, Department of Civil Defense, has issued the precautions bellow and we hope people would follow them in case of chlorine gas attack:

1- Leave the polluted area and move to a place with fresh air as fast as you can.
2- Put a wet piece of cloth on the nose and breath through it.
3- Switch off all power outlets, if you were home.
4- Don’t gather at the attack scene. Follow the orders of the civil defense members and medical staffs at the scene.
5- Gather in a closed room with few air holes to prevent the gas from going into it.
6- Wash the skin rashes with water.
7- Avoid administering the “kiss of life” to the affected and it is preferred to allow them fresh air.
8- Evacuate the affected to the nearest hospital to be treated quickly.

Department of Civil Defense wishes people good health”

What do you think?

That’s what the people of Iraq have to deal with every moment of their life. Do you think they can enjoy a meal now? They didn’t before, but now that it is clear that their might be a chemical attack and the Iraqi government can do nothing about it. How does an Iraqi inside Iraq think now? I feel so isolated that I can’t even out myself in my brother’s shoes now. He lives in Baghdad. Does he wish to wake up tomorrow at all? I don’t know. He said “yes.” But why would he want to live in such circumstances. What’s in the Iraqis’ minds? I really don’t know.

Here is more

BAGHDAD (AP) — Shiite militants and police enraged by deadly truck bombings went on a shooting rampage against Sunnis in a northwestern Iraqi city Wednesday, killing as many as 70 men execution-style and prompting fears that sectarian violence was spreading outside the capital.
The killings occurred in the mixed Shiite-Sunni city Tal Afar, which had been an insurgent stronghold until an offensive by U.S. and Iraqi troops in September 2005, when militants fled into the countryside without a fight. Last March, President Bush cited the operation as an example that gave him "confidence in our strategy."
The gunmen roamed Sunni neighborhoods in Tal Afar through the night, shooting at residents and homes, according to police and a local Sunni politician. Witnesses said relatives of the Shiite victims in the truck bombings broke into Sunni homes and killed the men inside or dragged them out and shot them in the streets.

Doesn’t this sound like civil war?

Now, I dare The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, CNN, CBS, the AP, REUTERS and other American news outlets to go public and say there is civil war in Iraq. Unless the U.S. administration says it, or allow them to say it, they wouldn’t do it! I don’t know why they want to protect the Americans from knowing the ugly truth from Iraq. some will say “no, but the Americans know.” and I say “No. They don’t. Not all of the know. And if they are going to demand the withdrawal of their troops from Iraq so strongly, they have to know what is really going on there.” I think that is just fair.

Kevin Sites came to my school a few months ago to give a speech. This was the guy who filmed the video of a U.S. Marine shooting an Iraqi insurgent, who was already injured but was still breathing, inside a mosque in Fallujah. He said that NBC, whom he worked for at the time, decided not to show the video of the Marine Killing the insurgent in the mosque. He said that he agreed with the network’s decision because he didn’t want to stir fury in the Middle East because of the footage. He said he believed that if the Iraqis and Arabs saw the footage, they will be angry because the Marine killed an insurgent who wasn’t armed and was already shot and barely breathing. But at the same time, he uploaded the footage online for all the non-American media to use it. Therefore, Jazeera, Arabia and other Arabic channels showed the footage. [you can see the video on the Video section in this blog.]

I thought there was something questionable in what he said to us, the audience. So I asked him “you said you didn’t want to provoke the Arab world, but you already put it available to every Arab tv channel. That doesn’t make sense. What do you mean?” So, he stammered and didn’t know what to say. So, I said “it feels like first it wasn’t your choice because I am in the business and I know that’s not a choice you can make. And also, it feels like the NBC just wanted to protect the Americans from seeing the brutality of the war. And you said you agreed?” By then he realized that he had to make sense now because the audience wanted an answer. So, he said “I know the decision was wrong and that’s why I put the footage on my blog a few days later and apologized to people.”

It is exactly the case now. I and other Iraqis have been saying that there is a civil war going in Iraqi since May 2005 and no one believed me. I hope the above is enough evidence so we can all wake up and try to deal with it.

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

take24stepstofreedom@yahoo.com

Just Because I'm Iraqi, I Have to Stay!

2007-03-24T22:26:00.000-04:00

I am in the United States on F1 student visa, like all my friends from school, who aren’t Americans. The only difference between them and myself is that they have a “multi entry” visa and I have a “single entry” one. For that reason, I cannot leave the United States until I am done with school. Otherwise, I have to go through the three-month visa application painful process all over again.

This semester, my school offered three travel classes in which students got financial support to travel to certain countries, come times of the student’s choice, to report on stories as part of class requirements. Although I was very interested in one of the classes, I couldn’t apply because I cannot leave the United States. Many of my colleagues are now in Turkey, China, Ghana, Morocco, Vietnam, and other countries. I really wanted to take advantage of this opportunity, but I am not allowed to!

One of the great things about the school I am in is that the faculty spare no efforts to create opportunities for us. I always wondered why everyone in school has the ability to make benefit of all the sources available to us, and why I have very limited possibilities to work with. I wanted to go to Ghana and report from there. Why can’t I do it? Others did.

One colleague left a few days to Amman, Jordan. She is going to write about Iraqi refugees there! Isn’t it a great story…… for me?! But I cannot do it now. I have to wait 18 more months! It doesn’t work this way in journalism.

I am a journalist. And when I applied to a visa, I applied as a journalism student. I cannot find a logical reason why they gave me a one-entry visa. They gave all Iraqi students one-entry visas!

We had to wait for months for the visa to be issued. I am sure they did all the background and security checks they could before they allowed me into the States. Otherwise they are just morons! Because they issued me a visa to enter the States, it means I am clear. Right? Then why the one-entry visa?

My Italian friends have multiple-entry visas. Why? Because they are journalists? I am, too. Because they need it in their classes? I do, too. Because they may feel home sick and need to go back to their country for a while? No comment! Because they will need that in case of family emergency? Hello…. My family is in Baghdad!

I wanted to go back to Baghdad in the summer. as part of school requirements, we have to spend three months working in a news outlet and I thought I would go back to Baghdad and work for my newspaper. What’s better than this! Iraq needs me and I am learning now to go back to Iraq anyway. I might as well apply what I’ve learned so far there. I talked to the newspaper and after long discussions [because they were concerned about the security situation there] I convinced them. But then the visa issue came back again and I was told that it will even be more difficult to apply again!

How do they think when they give a journalist one-entry visa?

When I think about it, I find no word to describe it but “discrimination.” Don’t you think? Why would a German or French get multiple-entry visa and I get what I got? There is no security issue because we all are clear, the evidence is that we all are here now. Pure discrimination and racism.

One of my very close friends here got a phone call a few days ago. “Your father has only a few weeks,” the other end of the call told him. He left to his country the next day.

I was thinking: What if someone called me and said “your father is sick and wants to see you.” What should I do? Don’t I have a family and feelings? Or it is just the French, Germans, Italians, Norwegians and everyone but the Iraqis?

What if someone in my family died? Should I grieve alone like I do everything else?

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

Take24stepstofreedom@yahoo.com

I Escaped Death Four Years Ago!

2007-03-17T17:02:00.000-04:00

On March 17, 2003, as Iraq was preparing to enter another war with the United States in two days, I escaped absolute death in a mysterious way. At the time, I decided that life isn’t worth it if I betrayed my principles. It was a risky and stupid game. I played it anyway.

After I graduated from college, I had to serve in the military, the mandatory military service. I could choose between serving 18 months or only three months, if I pay a legal fee, we called it Bedel [it was little more than $1,000 at the time.] So, of course I decided to pay.

I had to join the army in January 2, 2003. And I did.

I bribed everyone I could to not participate in the training. I am not the kind of person who appreciates weapons. I cannot stand them. Maybe I was traumatized when I was a child, I don’t care. My enemy is weapons. So, I couldn’t stand the training. I didn’t want to touch a Kalashnikov [or AK47.] I asked the commander of out platoon to exclude me from weapons training and I would give him some good money in return.

The commander agreed. I never touched a weapon during my time in the military.

But it wasn’t all that pleasant. They moved us around Iraq like five times during the three months. My last post was Qara Hanjeen [or Qariat a-Rabie,] which is a village in the mountains on the between Kirkuk and Erbil. I transferred there on March 1, 2003.

This village was originally Kurdish. But Saddam’s army killed its people and burned and destroyed the houses during the campaign against the Kurds in the late 1980s. It is on the borders of Chamchamal, where the Kurdish militias, the Peshmerga, stationed to defend their territories from a possible “Arab” attack.

The Iraqi army turned the ruins of the village, what is left of the houses, into its barracks. The mountains around the village were landmines fields. The Iraqi army and the peshmerga fought each other and trespassed on each other’s territories. Some told me that the peshmerga snipers killed many Iraqi soldiers while they smoked cigarettes. They traced the light! They were that close to where I was supposed to sleep! In general, a 45-minute-drive area from the borders of Kirkuk to Chamchamal was a military territory and civilians couldn’t pass unless with permission from the Iraqi army.

The houses in Qara Hanjeen were still marked with black smoke on their walls and were riddled with bullets. The walls inside the houses told stories, old inhabitants of these houses scratched their memories and stories to remind the new comers who the owner was. The Iraqi soldiers also scratched their thoughts on the walls. A sad mosaic of the misery of an entire nation.

By that time, we all knew that the Americans are coming no doubt. I was happy. I always told my family that “my brothers [the Americans] are coming to free me and I will go with them. You will miss me.”

I didn’t want to stay in a battle filed. I wasn’t going to defend Saddam’s government and it was time for me to pay the $1,000 to the government to go out of the army because I already “served” the required time which was three months. Therefore, I didn’t stay on the base in Qara Hanjeen. I bribed the commander so I can go there every three or four days to pay more money and take the five-hour drive back to Baghdad the same day.

On March 12, 2003 I finished all the paperwork to pay the Bedel and had to get one signature on the forms from the commander in Qara Hanjeen to be done with the army. I left Baghdad to Qara Hanjeen on Friday, March 14 thinking that I could get the papers stamped and signed by the commander the same day and leave to Baghdad very early on Saturday. The talk about the war was everywhere. We expected a bomb anytime.

On the way to Qara Hanjeen, through Kirkuk, the smell of war was obvious. Iraqi soldiers were everywhere in the streets. They enforced all the main roads and intersections with sandbags and concrete walls to shelter behind in case of an attack. They feared the peshmerga the most because they knew if an attack to happen, the first thing for the peshmerga to do is to attack Kirkuk.

I arrived to Qara Hanjeen. The commander wasn’t on base and I was told that he was coming back next day. I had to spend the night on base. I had no clothes to change and nothing on me but $750 that I thought I would need to bribe people along the process. Other soldiers, most of them were graduates of engineering and education colleges, helped me and gave me a dirty rag to sleep on and protect my body from the freezing concrete floor. We all slept in one house in one 10X16 feet room.

It was an awful night. I couldn’t sleep. I haven’t eaten since last night when I was home and had dinner with my family. I hadn’t had water or went to the bathroom in at least 12 hours. I didn’t want to eat or drink or do anything before I got back home. All what I had was cigarettes, Pine Lights. I put a brick under my head and stared at the ceiling thinking about what I was going through. Others’ snoring was the only reminder that it was bed time.

I couldn’t take the boots off because it was freezing. I even left the beret on my head to keep my skull warm.

The dim light of two kerosene lamps drew scary shadows of heads and bags on the wall. I was trying to amuse myself by looking at the shadows and trying to figure out what they looked like. I thought of my life and future. I had graduated from college a year ago. I studied English literature and language for four years and wanted to continue my M.A. studies in phonetics and phonology. I applied to Baghdad University’s higher studies and my application was denied because “he doesn’t meet the security requirements.” I wasn’t shocked, given that my family was always against the government publicly and my uncle was the face of the Iraqi opposition abroad. Now I am here, maybe I would be killed soon if the war broke out.

It was a long night.

The next day, March 15, at 6:30 a.m. I was standing outside the commander’s office waiting for him to come and sign my papers. He finally came back around noon. I thought that it was still early. “I can still go back to Baghdad today.”

The commander told me “I don’t have the stamp with me. It is with my assistant and he will come later today.”

I waited. I had no other choice. The military law, or maybe the Saddam law, said that if a soldier tried to escape the service in a war time, he should be shot dead. [I was told that they would do it in front of my house!]

The assistant didn’t come back. It was getting dark and I hadn’t had food or water or went to the bathroom in about two days. I hadn’t slept for the same period of time. I went to the commander and asked him what I should do and he promised to stamp and sign the papers very early the next day. So, I went back to the dark and stinky room. The room of horror. Of course I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking about my family, who I left thinking I was going to see them the next day. “What are they thinking now?” I asked myself. “What is my mother doing, I bet she is crying. With all the news about the war, I bet she is going crazy now and I have been out of my house in a battle field for two days now and they have no idea where I am or what I am doing.”

Next day, March 16, I was standing before the commander’s office very early in the morning. I was told that he and his assistant left to the headquarters in Kirkuk for a “meeting with the leadership” and will be back in the afternoon. I thought “this is good. At least I know that his assistant is here and they will sign my papers.”

I waited until it was 8 p.m. and dark. I lost hope. With nothing but cigarettes for three days, I was desperate. My family didn’t know what was going on with me. They don’t know if I am alive or not. They don’t know how or who to ask about me. They were alone, and I was desperate.

Finally, they came back shortly after 9 p.m. I went to the commander’s office and asked him to sign my papers.

“We have new orders,” he said. “Bedel is not accepted anymore because it is war. The leadership announced emergency status. You have to stay here until the end of the war.” I told him that I would give him the $750 I had, which was a lot at that time, if he signed my papers. He laughed loud.

“We will all be killed,” he said, “what should I do with your money?” And dismissed me.

I was devastated. I am going to die here. I don’t know how to use a weapon to defend myself. Even if I did, defend myself against whom? My brothers [that what I called the U.S. soldiers] or against the Kurds [I am half Kurdish]? I cannot do that.

I decided to end this stupid play and do it my way.

On March 17, 2003 I escaped from the army. Before dawn I sneaked out of the room and then out of the barracks and walked with no sense of direction in the mountains. The only fear I had was landmines. But then I thought “I cannot fight in this war. I’ve been waiting for this war to happen.” So, to get killed in a landmine while escaping a dictatorship is better that getting killed fighting for Saddam Hussein.

A few minutes later I found a military vehicle approaching. I stopped it and convinced the driver that my commander sent me back home because I paid the Bedel. I had the papers, they just weren’t signed and he couldn’t tell.

The driver took me to the main bus station in Kirkuk, where I found a taxi willing to take me to Baghdad.

The driver was worried to take someone in a military uniform in his car. But I told him that I was legal and showed him the papers. He told me stories about soldiers who were shot dead in front of their houses during the Iranian-Iraqi war just because they escaped the battlefiled. I was shaking, but couldn’t let him see that.

Along the way to Baghdad, there were many military checkpoints, which were installed to arrest the escaping soldiers. I don’t know why they didn’t suspect me, although I was in the uniform. They stopped us several times and asked for papers and documents. I don’t know why they didn’t notice that the papers weren’t signed. The driver took care of the talking. I was just listening. I was terrified all the way. You can imagine: it was either I go back home, or get shot in the head for escaping a battle filed.

I finally saw my house. I arrived home. Such a wonderful feeling. I don’t want anything now but a hot bath and a meal and my bed. Nothing fancy. I just want my life back.

Just two days before the war, I entered the house. No one expected me. My parents, brothers, my uncle and his wife and my cousins gathered in my home. I could tell what they were doing in the last three days from the black circles around their red and exhausted eyes.

They thought I was gone!

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

A Coup Is Not The Way Out!

2007-03-08T02:29:00.000-05:00

The Fadhila Islamic Party announced today its withdrawal from the Shiite alliance [officially dubbed The United Iraqi Alliance] in the Iraqi government. The party is one of the powerful Shiite parties that hold 15 seats of the 130 the Shiites have in the parliament. They got the seats after they joined the Shiite alliance and ran as one bloc in the parliamentary elections in December 2005.

Déjà vu! We’ve heard things like this before. A few months ago, the Sadr group, which holds 30 seats in the Shiite alliance, withdrew from the government and the cabinet. But they joined back after they achieved what they wanted, which I think was to guarantee protection of their Mehdi army leaders and more space in the streets to do their job of killing Iraqis. Before that, Iyad Allawi’s group, the Iraqi National List, threatened to withdraw their 25 seats from the 275-seat parliament unless the government worked on achieving “national unity and reconciliation” or something like that. And of course, the Sunnis cannot watch everyone threatening to leave without joining. The Sunnis walked out of a parliament session several times and threatened to suspend their participation in the political process. Their Iraqi Accordance Front holds 44 seats in the parliament. A few days before the elections, the Iraqi Islamic Party, which is one of the key members of the Sunni Iraqi Accordance Front, announced its withdrawal from the elections because they felt that the Shiites were playing dirty game in the election campaigns. It was a tricky way to gain more support from the Sunnis because the elections law in Iraq says that a group cannot withdraw its candidates from the elections after a certain deadline, which the Islamic party waited for to pass and then withdrew.

Politics! I love it because it is a dirty and stinky game!

When the Fadhila party joined the Shiite alliance “we thought it was the first step to unite one of the factions of the Iraqi fabric which would lead to unite all the Iraqis,” a statement from the party said. “What happened in the [political] arena was that every bloc was concerned only with its faction.”

Woow. I have to ask: were you asleep? That was a long nap!

Where were you when you joined the alliance. I mean it was obvious that each bloc cared about not even their faction, but their own interests. Your campaign called for compensations for only the Shiites who were killed by Saddam Hussein’s government for God’s sake. How is that uniting Iraqis? Your campaign used Sistani’s pictures, how is that uniting “all” Iraqis? And where were you since you got your 15 seats and received all the salaries and “commissions” from the oil contracts in Basra, which your militias control?

There is talk that Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite, is secretly organizing a group that eventually takes over and be the new Iraqi government. I couldn’t find any evidence on that. I called my sources in Iraq and elsewhere and they said that they heard this rumor, but have no evidences. So, I couldn’t say if it is a fact or not.

It is amazing that Fadhila party withdrew from the alliance after they used it name and power to get the 15 seats. And now, with all the facts that the government has failed and continues to fail. The Iraqis didn’t vote for Fadhila party, they voted for an alliance that Fadhila is part of it.

By the way, in January 2006, the Islamic Dawa Party, a main party in the Shiite alliance, threatened to withdraw its 15 seats from the sectarian bloc if the alliance didn’t support the party’s request to nominate a Prime Minister who is a member of Dawa. When most of the blocs in the parliament rejected, the party threatened to screw everything. With the Sadr group’s and Fadhila’s threats to withdraw, too much for The “United” Iraqi Alliance!

“We think the first step to rescue Iraq should be to dismantle those [ethnic and sectarian] blocs and not to allow organizing the bloc on the bases of ethnicity or sectarianism,” Fadhila party said in its statement.

Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister, hearing all these rumors and facing all the pressure from the United States, keeps promising a reshuffle of his cabinet. I’ve been hearing about this promise for months now. But it doesn’t happen. Even if it happens, the change will be the faces only buut the ideologies will always be the same. I don’t understand why people don’t realize that if a minister from the Sadr group is dismissed and another one, also from Sadr group, comes in, that means nothing has changed. The Iraqi government’s problem is not the individuals only, but rather the political groups themselves. I’ve mentioned this in an entry when they announced Maliki as a prime minister and I said that people shouldn’t be optimistic that we got rid of Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the leader of Dawa party, and replaced him with the number one in the party!

I believe it is very difficult to change anything now. Even if Allawi succeeds to attract the best blocs and politicians in the country, it will not happen. The Shiites will not let it happen, even if he got the Kurds on his side.

The only chance for the Iraqi political arena to change is to wait for the next parliamentary elections in 2009. I strongly believe that this is our last chance to prove that we are a human and humane nation!

I believe that the Iraqis know by now what a turbaned and poisonous government can do, or cannot do. The Iraqis tasted their bitter medicine, which they thought might cure years of oppression. They have to change in the next elections. After failing and losing thousands of lives in the succession of two turbaned governments, they realized that Ali al-Sistani, Harith al-Dhari and other poisonous snakes are not the way to go.

I really believe that my people will go for seculars in the next elections. If they don’t, then they deserve what will happen, or should I say: what will continue to happen! And by then, there is no point of having the U.S. troops there because they will be risking their lives for nothing!

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

No Electricity Until 2013!

2007-03-02T01:25:00.000-05:00

The Associated Press reported today that “Getting full-time electric power turned on in Baghdad….. won't be accomplished until 2013,” quoting U.S. officials.

I couldn’t link to the story at the time of writing this entry, because I got it from a wire service that requires subscription. So, I think you can wait until it is in newspapers and read it.

The news didn’t surprise me, but it did strike me that they come out and say this now. In a time when all the efforts are said to focus on quelling violence in Iraq, especially in Baghdad, and bringing Iraqis the hope back of a better future, I don’t think this news is the right thing to say now.

The story talked about how much power the Baghdadis get now. “In January, it was 4.4 hours; in February, it was 5.9,” the story said. That isn’t true! I talk to my family every morning and they’ve been telling me that my neighborhood, which is a hardcore Sunni neighborhood, has been getting ONE hour of electricity per day and for months now!

The U.S. has spent $4.2 billion on the power issue in Iraq so far, the AP said. Where did the money go?

I just cannot convince my stubborn mind that the U.S. is that stupid that no one is figuring out where the money is going. Sometimes I think that they “trust” the Iraqi officials that much that they hand them all these billions and say “go ahead and spend it on electricity projects. No, you don’t have to report to us.” But then I remember: it doesn’t work this way.

I know it is corruption, but I don’t know for sure what the U.S. is doing to prevent that.

If it were for me, I wouldn’t deal with the same people for four years if I see my money disappears and don’t see any progress. Therefore, I ask myself “if I think this way, is it possible that the U.S. administration has no one to think like me!”

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

Habibti Beebeeti!

2007-02-21T22:42:00.000-05:00

The most difficult situation anyone can be in is to feel that he/she doesn’t belong to a place. I fear this. It terrorizes me to know that in a few months I will not belong to a country. When Iraq is dead, soon, I will be a person of no citizenship!

My worst nightmare is that. To, when people ask me where I am from, I say “I live in the U.S. now.” Of course I love being here with people the least I can say about them is that they are nice. But it is not my country and it will not be. It is not the place where I was borne or the place where I grew up and had the best years of my life.

The U.S. is not where I said my first word. It is not where I took my first step and went to kindergarten and school. It is not where I learned swimming, pottery, read poetry and novels and newspapers.

My first love was in Iraq. I met my best friends there. My grandmother, who raised me up and who I called “habibti beebeeti” [my love, grandmother] is buried in Iraq. When she died in September 2005, I was in Cairo. I was in the first flight back to Baghdad to just be there with my family and be in her funeral. When she died, I lost part of myself that I will never get back. On her grave, I promised I would never leave her alone. Her picture is on my desk now.

I hated Iraq when I was a teenager and until recently. I didn’t learn how and why I love my country until I came to the U.S., when I saw how much people love their country. I learned to love my country after I left it. I think this is the rule ‘when you are away from your country, you miss it. Simple.]

I was talking to Bisbis, author of the blog Treasure of Baghdad, on the phone a few minutes ago and the conversation took us to where I said “I fear that if we don’t go back to Iraq after we finish school, we will be called exiles!”

The word irritates me. Why should I be exiled!

The history of my country tells us that any educated people, who tried to help the country and make a change, we eventually called exiles. I fear that I will be like them one day.

What made me write this unplanned post is an email I received just two hours ago from a dear Iraqi friend of mine living in Jordan. She was always optimistic about the situation and future of Iraq. When we talked about Iraq while I was living in Jordan last summer, I was always pessimistic [predicting what is already happening now in Iraq] and she always disagreed with me.

“No, it will not last for a long time,” she always said. “We will go back soon.” And I always told her she was wrong!

In her email, she said:

“The situation in Baghdad as you said in your last email, will improve, maybe in my grandchildren's lifetime. I never expected myself to say such words one day. It’s heartbreaking, as for the poor Iraqis I meet here in Jordan, their poverty is beyond comprehension, simply to secure their lives.”

Iraq….. I miss you!

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

Best Feeling Ever!

2007-02-15T04:01:00.000-05:00

The best feeling anyone could ever experience, I believe, is when you feel productive and are doing something that others can benefit from.

A few days ago, I wrote about the little help the Iraqis are getting from other countries in the world. In October, the UN said that “over 1,000 Iraqis are fleeing their homes each day.” Today, the UN said that about 1.8 million Iraqis were displaced within Iraq since the leveling of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra and about two million Iraqis have fled the country since. But there’s been very little offered from the international community to help them and Jordan and Syria have made it very difficult for Iraqis, who are fleeing the genocide in Iraq, to go live in one of the two countries. Jordanian authorities have been harassing the Iraqis living in Jordan and threatening them to be kicked out of the country [you know, after Saddam Hussein’s regime was toppled the free oil stopped pouring to Jordan!] And the Syrians are giving 15-day stay for Iraqis that could be extended to three month twice and then they’ll have to leave!

I wrote about that hoping that my voice could be heard.

Today, the United States announced that it will accept 7,000 Iraqi refugees this year!
It was the best news I’ve heard about Iraq and Iraqis for months now. It is very important that we give hope to Iraqis. And maybe this step will encourage other countries to do the same and welcome Iraqis. Not Arab countries of course because we lost hope in our brothers years ago! We depend on friends now.

It was good to hear this news after I wrote an entry about the subject. I’m not saying that it happened because I wrote it. But it is a good answer to those who are asking “why should we keep writing if no one cares?” No, I say. Our voices are getting loud and are heard and people do care.

It happened with me before. In November 2005, I wrote an entry under the title In Between. I put some random thoughts in it and one of the thoughts was: why Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General, visited Jordan after the bombings that killed 60 Jordanians and didn’t care to visit Iraq, where scores are being killed a day? The next day, Friday, Annan arrived to Baghdad and I went and went and covered his meeting with Ghazi al-Yawar, who was the deputy president of Iraq then, and I wrote another entry about it.

It is the best feeling ever!

Thanks to my readers. All!

Feeh!

Very Sad... In a Funny Way!

2007-02-10T04:58:00.000-05:00

Let’s Talk Facts and Forget About the BS!

2007-02-06T02:30:00.001-05:00

Since the invasion in 2003 we’ve been hearing about how the Shiites were oppressed under Saddam Hussein. Of course, I am not going to deny that. But I also want to say that Hussein’s regime didn’t only oppress the Shiites! It oppressed the Iraqis. for instance, in the unreasonable war that Iraq fought with Iran for eight years, not only Shiites were killed, but Iraqis in general were the victims.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, his army wasn’t only Sunnis, but it was Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and Christians and people from every part of Iraq. And when the U.S. decided to “protect” Kuwait from Iraq and “liberate” it, Iraqis from every sect were killed in the 1991 war.

When the sanctions were imposed by a UN resolution to “punish the Iraqi government,” everyone in Iraq was affected. Not only the Shiites! We didn’t keep count of who was suffering the most then, because we all did.

All what we hear now is how the Shiites were excluded from government jobs and the high ranks in the baath party and the Iraqi cabinets under the rule of baath party. We don’t hear about how the Sunnis suffered too, and the Turkumans and the Kurds and everyone.

We don’t hear the fact that Saddam Hussein favored his henchmen and sycophants regardless what their religion was or what sect they belonged to.

To tell a little of the truth, here is what I could get over the last few weeks. I was looking for the positions the Shiites occupied under the baath party rule in Iraq, with names. I was lucky and got this list. I have some names for Kurds, Christians and Turkumans too.

Read bellow. Maybe you will finally understand what Saddam Hussein did in Iraq. He only favored his people, who were of all kinds!

- The first Shiite army Chief of Staff in Iraq, Maj. Gen Abdul Wahid Shannan Alrabat, was appointed during the rule of the baath party.
- The longest to serve as a Minister of Foreign Affairs in Iraq was a Shiite, Dr. Saadoun Hammadi. That was under the rule of baath party.
- The Minister of Foreign Affairs during the 1990s was a Shiite, Muhammed Saied al-Sahaf. [Who got very famous during the invasion in 2003 serving as the Minister of Information.]
- The longest to serve as the Minister of Oil in Iraq was a Shiite, Saadoun Hammadi. That was under the rule of baath party.
- The longest for the Shiites to occupy the position of Governor of the Iraqi Central Bank was during the rule of baath party. The position was held by Dr. Abdul Hasan Zalzala and Tariq al-Takmachi. It never happened before the bath party.
- The first time for the Shiites to occupy the position of Director of General Security in the history of Iraq was under the rule of baath party. His name was Nadhum Gzar. His assistant was a Shiite Kurd, Ali Ridha Bawa.
- The man who was in charge of the investigation in the case of Dawa Party, one of the leading Shiite parties in the opposition and of which current Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is a member, was Shiite. He was a Colonel in the security forces. His name was Ali al-Khaqani, originally from Najaf.
- The Revolution Court, which was tasked with dealing with “treason” cases, at some point was headed by a Shiite: Hadi Ali Witwit. [The main reason why Saddam Hussein was hanged was because this court issued death sentences agains 148 members on Dawa Part in the early 1980s after they failed to assassinate him.]
- Under the rule of baath party, two Shiites got the position of Prime Minister: Saadoun Hammadi and Muhammed Hamza al-Zubaidi.
- Saadoun Hammadi, a Shiite, served the longest as the Speaker of the National Council [parliament.]
- The National Oil Distribution Company was headed by three Shiites over a long period of time: Abdul Amir al-Anbari, Fadhil al-Chalabi [Ahmed Chalbi’s cousin] and Ramzi Salman.
- More than 60% of the Director General positions in the Military Industries Commission [which was one of the most important commissions in Iraq] were occupied by Shiites. More than 70% of the engineers were Shiites.
- Most of the scientists and the experts in the Atomic Energy Organization in Iraq were Shiites, including Dhia Jaafar, Hussein Ismail, Ismail al-Bahadli and Hussein al-Shahristani.
- During the baath party period, all the Director General positions in the ministry of Education in mid and southern Iraq were occupied by Shiites.
- More than 60% of the baath party members were Shiites. [Those who don’t believe can go back to the debaathification decree and check whom it affected the most. They wouldn’t admit this yet or even mention it!]
- During the Iran-Iraq war, the commander of the artillery division was Gen. Hamid al-Warid, a Shiite. The Secretary General of the ministry of Defense [or the second man in the ministry] was General Saadoon Shikara al-Maliki, a Shiite. after him, another Shiite got the position, General Chiad al-Imara. The Director of the Political Education [a department in the armed forces] was Abdul Jabbar Muhsin al-Lami, a Shiite. The commander of the border protection forces of Iraq was General Ali Shallal, a Shiite.
- The Iraqi Envoy to the United Nations’ position was occupied by 10 men during the rule of baath party. Four of them were Shiites: Talib Shibeeb, Abdul Amir al-Anbari, Saied al-Mousawi, Muhammed Sadiq al-Mashat. Plus a Shiite Kurd.
- Iraq’s envoys to the UNSCO during the rule of baath party included two Shiites: Aziz Haj Qali, a Shiite Kurd and Abdul Amir al-Anbari.
- The last Editor in Chief of al-Thawra newspaper, the baath party official newspaper, was a Shiite: Sami Mehdi.
- Hussien’s closest assistant in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s was a Shiite: Sabah Mirza Mahmood, a Shiite Kurd.

My Advice to My Family is to Suck It Up and Die!

2007-02-02T02:15:00.000-05:00

It is so sad how the Iraqis are left alone to deal with what is happening in their country. No one is trying to help them. The Arab countries, as always, turned their back to my people and asked them to go to hell and suck it up. European countries are even more restrict than before with giving Iraqis immigration visas. And the U.S. .. well, it is complicated!

The only countries that were opened to Iraqis after the invasion were Jordan, Egypt and Syria.

The Jordanian government didn’t allow Iraqis to live in Jordan because it wanted to help. No. The Jordanians know that Iraq is the best resource they could ever have. Under Saddam Hussein, Jordan enjoyed the best oil deal ever. It was for free! Jordan was a poor city before Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990. If you go to Jordan now, you will find that it is a brand new country. It is because the construction in that country started after the Iraqis poured millions of dollars every year since 1991 into the Jordanian economy. It was a deal made between Hussein and King Hussein of Jordan that Iraqis would be allowed into Jordan to vacation or live permanently.

Free oil and millions of dollars. You do the math and find why they agreed.

In the 1980s, Hussein invited 5 million Egyptians to come to Iraq and work. He, being the leader of the Arab nation, wanted to help the Egyptians find a way to deal with their crippling economy and everlasting problem of unemployment. They came to Iraq and shared the “blessings” of our country with us. I don’t believe the Iraqis were ever mad about that. The Egyptians were treated like the Iraqis. They lived with us, ate with us, felt happy and sad with us and made fortunes, better than us!

To prove the intention to start new and good relations with Iraq, Syria opened its doors wide for the Iraqis lately to help them shelter and escape the horror and death they have to go through and fight in Iraq. Of course, not for nothing. Like in Jordan, there are dozens of new apartment buildings and housing units being built in Damascus, Aleppo and other Syrian cities to accommodate the Iraqis. A new market that would help the baathist government pay the salaries and pour more money into the Syrian pockets.

Now, those three countries are not welcoming Iraqis anymore. Jordan fears that some “Iraqi terrorists” might sneak into Jordan and do some fireworks there. They already forgot who Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was and what he’s don’t in Iraq. And Egypt… just one name is enough “Abu Hamza al-Masri !!”

Syria is ok with what the former baathists are spending in its nightclubs every night. They don’t need to help innocent Iraqis and provide them a place to stay in until we see what happens in Iraq.

When someone gets threatened in Iraq nowadays, they have no place to go to. A few weeks ago, when the Sunnis threatened Shiite families in Yarmook neighborhood in Baghdad and gave them 10 hours to leave their houses, the Shiite families didn’t know where to go. Yet, the decided to leave. On their way out of the neighborhood, they were identified as Shiites [because they were moving] and were killed anyway.

When some of my relatives were threatened for sectarian reasons, they wanted to leave Iraq. But they had no place to go to because Jordan doesn’t allow Iraqis under 50 to enter the country, Syria is giving Iraqis only 15-day residency and Egypt is not allowing Iraqis in at all.

So, to make it short and clear: with all what is going in Iraq, the Iraqis are being oppressed by everyone else in the world. I don’t know what it is with Iraqis. But I know for sure that they were left alone every time they had a problem.

When the sanctions were imposed to starve Iraqis to death after the invasion of Kuwait, the U.S. asked for the sanctions, the UN signed the resolution and the Arab League applauded.

When the U.S. attacked Iraq again in 1998, the Arab channels were busy showing news from the “Palestinian cause.”

When Saddam Hussein announced that Iraq is going through a hard time in 2000 or something like that, the Arab poets and actors and actresses came to rescue Iraq. They got their share of the oil coupons and left.

When the U.S. announced “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” many many people in the world went to the streets and condemned the decision. On their way back home, they bought popcorn and drinks so they could eat and drink while they watched Iraq being bombed and Iraqis being killed on their satellite channels.

And now, when the Iraqis are calling for help because it is very hard to change or fix anything in Iraq in the soon future, and the entire world knows that, and when my people ask for a place to stay in[and pay for it not free] no one is helping. It is no one’s fault but the Iraqis’ and they have to suck it up and wait in line to get killed.

If Iraq was still giving free oil, it would be different now!

Email Me 24stepstoliberty@gmail.com

No End in Sight!

2007-01-26T13:15:00.000-05:00

The Sundance Film Festival has started a few days ago. It promises very strong and interesting movies and documentaries. One of them is No End in Sight, which is a documentary filmed in Iraq and the States and is trying to uncover the truth about where everything started to deteriorate in Iraq after the invasion.

According to the documentary, it all started before the invasion!

I had the chance to go to the first screening of the documentary, which was in the festival in Park City, Utah. It was quite an experience.

The theater was full. More than 300 people came to see the film.

“What you are about to see isn’t a light comedy,” Charles Ferguson, the director of the movie, told the audience before the film started. I thought what he said was perfect, especially when there were some people who came with popcorn and drinks to see a film talking about the massacre of dozens of thousands of people!

“I wouldn’t be appropriate to say ‘I hope you enjoy it,’ ” he added.

The movie starts with footage from before the invasion. Footage from the preparations of “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Remember the old days? When we all were optimistic that the invasion of Iraq was going to topple a horrible dictator and help to install a democracy in the heart of the Middle East!

A few minutes into the film, Donald Rumsfeld appears speaking and addressing President Bush.

“The contributions that you’ve made will be recorded by history,” Rumsfeld said releasing a wave of laughter in the theater.

As the film goes on, you will see the usual from Iraq, scenes from car bombings with bodies burned scattered in the street, people terrified by a car bomb and running away from the scene, buildings that once were ministries where people worked everyday and now turned into rubble and many other familiar footage from post-war Iraq. One thing you would find new or rare in this film and that is the truth!

No End in Sight is the first documentary from Iraq that I’ve seen that is showing American and Iraq officials admitting the mistakes that were done and saying that they knew they were making mistakes all the way, but no one in the American administration cared at the time. It is shocking to listen to some of the top American officials, who were involved in the invasion of Iraq, talking about how unorganized it seemed to them, yet continued! Continued invading a nation with thousands of years of heritage and civilization and with no attention to any consequences that the people might suffer from because the most important thing for the American administration is to announce “mission accomplished” as soon as they could to show the world how easy and fast it was to topple a dictator.

As the film starts to show footage from before the war to remind us why the decision was made to invade Iraq, the audience chuckled. They heard Bush and Powel justifying the invasion as a way to safe the world from a regime that supported al-Qaeda and provided safe haven to it members and produced “the most lethal weapons that have ever been made,” as Bush said, they laughed because…. Well…we all know why!

One official said that the administration was going around telling congressmen and other officials that Iraq was producing weapons of mass destruction and is going to load them into ships and sail to the shores of the United States and attack Washington D.C. and New York. He couldn’t believe what they were saying because it sounded like something that doesn’t happen in the real world.

“I don’t know what they were smoking,” he said with a serious face, “but it must have been good.”

The State department prepared a 13-volume study on how possibly to handle Iraq after the invasion. The administration didn’t read it, interviewees in the documentary said.

Ambassador Barbara Bodine, former U.S. ambassador to Yemen and was in charge of Baghdad for the U.S. occupation and for a few months after the invasion, said that had they read the study, which was detailed, the situation could have been much much better now.

Bodine, who is one of the U.S. officials interviewed in the film and I had great talks with her over Iraq and the situation then and now, said that she was deployed to Baghdad just a few weeks before she actually left to Iraq. No one cared weather she knew the country or what to do there. When she arrived, she said, she didn’t have a phone list to start with, like many other occupation officials in Iraq. They didn’t even have phones, they didn’t have places to stay in, they didn’t have computers or proper internet. That is how they invaded Iraq!

When the looting started, Bodine said, the U.S. civilian and military administrations in Iraq were precisely told not to intervene and leave the Iraqis to do what they wanted.

At the beginning, there were enough U.S. troops to stop the first wave of looting. But all were ordered not to stop it.

“We area Marine platoon,” said Seth Moulton, a Marine lieutenant whose platoon was among the first to enter Baghdad and was interviewed in the film. “We could prevent the looting if they asked us.” I had good talks with Moulton too because he was in Park city.

The Coalition Provisional Authority, led by Paul Bremer, totaled the cost of the looting as $12 billion! And many U.S. officials who were in Baghdad at the time believe that the looting was the seed to the insurgency!

“Stuff happens,” Rumsfeld appears in the film as saying. The now-famous phrase that summarized the arrogance and stupidity of the Bush administration in two words.

I liked the title of the documentary. “No End in Sight.” It is unfortunately perfect!

Bush and Maliki are Getting a Divorce!

2007-01-18T02:39:00.000-05:00

It is clear that the marriage between the U.S. administration and the Iraqi government is on its way to end. The exchange of accusations and sharp criticism between the two former love-birds has accelerated to be the talk of the town in the last few weeks.

Between President Bush thinking the execution of Saddam Hussein last month was “fumbled” by militiamen barking in the name of their leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, and “go to hell” chanting, and Condoleezza Rice announcing that the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government is working on "borrowed time," Maliki was left to just defending his position by accusing the United States of helping to “give morale boosts for the terrorists.”

Forget about the average Iraqis, whose number is decreasing inside Iraq either because they are leaving the country or getting killed everyday, the two governments are having a typical Middle Eastern, dictator and totalitarian way of handling issues. Because to forget the real problem and only concentrate on saving face is just for such governments, not suitable for two administrations that claim to be pioneers in democracy each in its part of the world.

Bush is upset that the Iraqi government isn’t listening to what he and his advisers are saying. And Maliki on his turn is upset that Bush’s administration is going public in criticizing his government.

This is not news for someone who’s been watching the game since the beginning. If we go back to Ibrahim Jaafari’s government, which was the first Shiite government in Iraq and was seated in late April 2005, we will find that the American administration wasn’t satisfied with it also. In fact as time went, the Bush administration voiced out its concerns that Jaafari’s government wasn’t dealing with the Shiite militias problems as strictly as it should have. Also, the Bush administration complained about the fact that Jafari’s government did not work to represent and include all the Iraqi factions in its body, the problem of expelling Baathists from the government and government jobs was obvious, not giving the Sunnis enough representation in the parliament was a concern to the U.S. administration, security was a concern, not being able to train and prepare enough Iraqi security forces was a major issue and many other problems that we see now, too.

When Jaafari was asked why the Iraqi security forces weren’t able to take over the security responsibility from the multinational forces, his answer was that “they are not properly equipped.”

“If we succeed in implementing the agreement between us to speed up the equipping and providing weapons to our military forces,” Maliki told reporters yesterday, “I think that within three to six months our need for the American troops will dramatically go down. That's on the condition that there are real strong efforts to support our military forces and equipping them and arming them," suggesting that the U.S. is not serious in its efforts to help Iraqi security forces.

After the U.S. administration got tired of Jaafari’s government last year, they pressed the Iraqi parliament not to reelect him. In fact, Zelmai Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq and its main player in the political arena, went crazy from one Iraqi politician’s house to another threatening to suspend the American support to the Iraqis if Jaafari was reelected. In a wicked trick, Jaafari suggested one of his party’s members, Nouri al-Maliki, to be the PM and threatened to boycott the whole political process if Maliki weren’t to become the first full-term Prime Minister of Iraq. [at the time, I wrote an entry, Have You Ever Seen A Turbaned Man With A Tie!, saying that electing Maliki would not mean any change because he is a member of Jaafari’s party and the problems will continue because Jaafari will stay as a decision maker but behind the stage.]

Now, the U.S. administration is facing the exact same problems it had with Jaafari’s government.

Because the U.S. administration cannot take anymore of Maliki’s inability to rule, Bush is accusing Maliki’s government of being ethnically-motivated and driven by the feel of revenge, for example he said that executing Hussein “looked like it was kind of a revenge killing." And Maliki thinks that Bush is forced to say that because of the public opinion pressure. Maliki now believes that the insurgents were able to terrify and foil the U.S. administration efforts in the Middle East and Iraq, “"But I can tell you that they have not defeated the Iraqi government," he said to reporters yesterday.

This exchange of criticism and angry statements is not new. Jaafari did the same thing when he felt the pressure of the U.S. administration for his failure to govern the country.

The problem is not Jaafari or Maliki. I think the main obstacle is that the U.S. is stuck between two main issue in Iraq: first is the fact that they have to hand over the country to its majority to rule, in this case it is the Shiite. And second is that the U.S. administration will never, never be satisfied with a Shiite ideology. It hasn’t worked and will not. What did you think when you replaced Jaafari by Maliki? Even with the Governing Council, from July 2003 until April 2004, the problems weren’t with the Kurdish members but they were with the Shiites [giving that there wasn’t a real powerful Sunni representation in the council.]

And for this very reason, we see now that the U.S. administration is trying to include back more Sunnis and the Baathists in the government. I can’t tell if that is another mistake yet because I don’t know who is going back so far, but I think it is a new strategy that shows the American frustration with what the Bush and Bremer mistakes have created in Iraq.

The Iraqi government “has still got some maturation to do,” Bush said yesterday. And I believe this is the beginning of complete turnaround in what kind of government the U.S. administration is going to keep/support in Iraq.

In the coming few months, we will see surprising changes in the Iraqi political picture, including a new Prime Minister. Maybe, and I am saying maybe, it will be the first correct step to be taken in the way to a real Iraqi government and to quell the violence.

I Agree Mr. President!

2007-01-10T23:32:00.000-05:00

For the first time maybe ever, I liked what Bush said. It is a rare moment of joy that I will cherish for the rest of this week!

In his speech addressing the Americans tonight, Bush was clear, to the point and not BSing. He, for the first time since I’ve started to listen to his speeches, took responsibility for the failures and mistakes his administration has committed in Iraq.

“Mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me,” he said. He told the nation that the American troops have followed the orders and exhausted every efforts they had trying to make Iraq a story of an American success in the Middle East. It wasn’t their fault that Iraq turned to be a black spot in the U.S. colonial history, he indicated.

“They have done everything we have asked them to do.”

Way to go Mr. President!

But when he started to lay out his plan for a safer Iraq, he made it clear that his new strategy will make the same mistakes over and over and the situation in Iraq will never be better.

One of the main reasons why the old security plans haven’t worked in Baghdad, he said, is that there weren’t enough Iraqi and American troops to maintain security in the areas that were cleansed by security forces. Therefore, he said, the insurgents came back to their havens after the Americans left.

To solve this problem, Bush said that he “committed more than 20,000 additional troops to Iraq,” most of them will be deployed to Baghdad. The plan is to “have the force levels we need to hold the areas that have been cleared.” There are already more than 130,000 American Troops in Iraq now.

But for how long Mr. President? What would happen when the American troops leave “the areas that have been cleared?” Do you even care?

To insure the Americans that this new strategy is going to work, he quoted Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki addressing the Iraqis last week as saying “The Baghdad security plan will not provide a safe haven for any outlaws regardless of their sectarian or political affiliation.”

Have you ever thought Mr. President, why would Maliki be sincere this time? He’s been in this position for seven months now and he’s been saying this same line since then. Three Baghdad security plans have been announced under this very same slogan and failed because it wasn’t true. Why would you think this time it will work? But you don’t care also because your audience is not the Iraqis. It is the Americans, who made it clear through their representatives in the congress that they are tired of the news from Iraq and don’t want to hear about it anymore.

Bush said that “Al-Qaeda terrorists and Sunni insurgents recognize the moral danger that the Iraq’s elections posed for their cause and they responded with outrageous acts of murder aimed at innocent Iraqis.” Now, what about the Shiite militias, who killed tens of thousands of Iraqis since Ibrahim Jaafari came to power as a Prime Minister in May 2005?

Bush did not mention the word militias in his speech today. He mentioned the term “death squads” as groups formed by Shiite elements to “viciously” stir a sectarian “violence,” but just after and because the al-Qaeda and Sunni insurgents bombed the revered Shiite shrine of Samarra in February. According to Bush, the Shiites didn’t start to kill Iraqis until then! I wish he would go back and read the casualties statistics from Iraq after May 2005, when Jaafari legalized the murderous militias and gave them jobs in the ministry of interior.

His generals made it clear over the last year that the militias are the danger number one in Iraq now, but he restrained from mentioning them in his new strategy for Iraq. What happened? Suddenly there is no militia problem in Iraq anymore? What was the deal you made a few weeks ago with Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of The Supreme Council for the Islamic evolution in Iraq and the leader of Badr organization [the brutal military of SCIRI] when he visited D.C.?

Why did Bush avoid talking about Shiite militias in his speech? He’s been telling Maliki that he should deal with those militias as soon as possible, or else. Why now it’s become taboo to talk about it?

Everyone, or everyone with a healthy mind and working brain, now knows that security cannot be maintained by only dealing with Sunni insurgents but by dealing with Shiite militias too. One of the most powerful weapons to kill Iraqis in Baghdad now is the militias. Everyday we hear about dozens of bodies found shot dead in the streets.

It is troublesome to think about it. There is something fishy going on and the scapegoat is the Iraqis.

“Now is the time to act,” Bush said. But why now? Is it because the Americans are fed up with the war in Iraq? It is obviously not because Iraqis are being killed by the dozens everyday! Just now you know that it is time to act? Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and more than 3000 American casualties did not give a clue!

As I said before, the real strategy is that more troops will be deployed to Iraq. A wide military operation will be launched in Baghdad to wipe out the Sunni insurgents from certain neighborhoods. The insurgents will leave to other places and hide. The American administration will announce the success of the new strategy in Iraq and start talks about withdrawing troops from Iraq. All this happens while Shiite militias are still killing average of 50 to 100 Iraqis a day, but we will hear nothing about it. We will only hear about how many insurgents are killed and arrested and how many Iraqi and American soldiers are killed along the way to achieve this success.

“The year ahead will demand more patience, sacrifice and resolve,” he said and I couldn’t agree more! But try to tell my mother that!

Thinking Loud In 2007!

2007-01-01T19:18:00.000-05:00

** The other day I was going through one of the Iraqi blogs, Baghdad Artist, when a simple, yet powerful detail struck me. Under “Location,” the writer wrote “Changing.”

That’s what 2007 is bringing to the Iraqis. A life like the nomads’.

** Saddam Hussein was executed. Iraqis will always remember how, just a few seconds before he was hanged, he laughed when some men in the room chanted “Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada.” Even in his last moments, the tyrant pissed off the oppressed! What a life we lived under Hussein’s rule and what a life we are living now!

** The first Iraqi government after hundreds of years of occupation was seated in 1921 under the umbrella of a monarchy led by King Faisal I.

A few years later, in 1958, a “revolution” erupted in Iraq and the king and his family were killed and mutilated in public. It was a bloody birth of the Iraqi Republic.

Five years later, another “revolution” paralyzed the country and the Prime Minister, Abdul Karim Qasim, was killed by the Baathists. Although the Iraqis still say they did not support that revolution, I don’t know why they didn’t defend the prime minister at the time!

Then there was the first Iraqi president, Abdul Salam Arif, who after several problems with the Iraqi Baathists and communists, was killed in a helicopter crash. Then his brother, Abdul Rahman Arif, became the president. Not for long though. The man was very weak as a politician and couldn’t hold under the pressure of his position.

In 1968 the Baathists revolted against Arif and got to rule the country. That’s when Saddam Hussein came to power as vice president to Ahmed Hasan al-Bakr.

During the 1970’s, Hussein plotted against Bakr, who was a relative of Hussein’s and shared a home town. In 1979, Bakr came of T.V. and told Iraqis that he was sick and couldn’t stay as the president. He appointed Hussein as a president.

Then, the invasion in 2003. Three Prime Ministers followed that and the Iraqis are still waiting for ONE good government.

After this very brief summary of Iraq’s political struggle, I have one more thing to say: Maybe it’s not the politicians or the rulers that were wrong. I mean after 85 years, three kings and five presidents, maybe it’s the people who need to be brought to justice. Maybe it is the Iraqis who need to wake up and realize that they get what they ask for, or, as was proven recently, they get what they vote for. And maybe it is the Iraqis who should be blamed for the chaos, not the governments. Don’t you think?

** On a totally different issue, yet the same wider problem:

With all my loving and sincere heart, I want to suggest something to be added to the attempts to solve the problem in Iraq, which are being discussed by the American administration. Because all what they are discussing is so out of reality and will do nothing to help the Iraqis anyway, why don’t we try this: As a “Happy New Year” from the U.S. administration to the Iraqi parliament members, all the 275 should be invited to the State for a week before April, which is the deadline for starting amending the Iraqi constitutions and agree on the everlasting disputed issues.

Of the things they should visit TOGETHER is The National Archives. They should go directly to the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom and be guided by someone who knows what kind of documents are displayed there. During the tour, they should learn how all the leaders of the old states with all there different cultures and education, who for a long time though it would be impossible to get together and solve there problems, agreed on the Declaration of Independence, Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights.

If that doesn’t make the Iraqi parliament members and politicians feel ashamed and make them agree on helping the people, then nothing will ever. And we can give up trying to help or advise them and never feel guilty anymore.

** By the way, can you believe they chanted “Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada” before they hanged Saddam Hussein? For God’s sake, at least chant “Hakim, Hakim, Hakim.” It’s much much better that Hussein dies thinking that Iraq is in the hands of a very wicked, experienced criminal than just a thug!

It is a Jungle! We Need a Tarzan!

2006-12-17T19:49:00.000-05:00

A few months ago, some of the Iraqi politicians, poisonous Mullas, corrupted businessmen, murderers and thugs waved their red-cover passports and left to Cairo. They left behind a country that is sinking in its daily bloodshed. The aim was a vacation; the Iraqi government called it “The Iraqi National Reconciliation Conference in Cairo.”

Months before the “loyal servants of the Iraqi people” left to Cairo, the preparations began. Media outlets called the conference “the first and very necessary” step to reach a compromise and “end years of violence and the shed of the Iraqi blood.” The first formal delegation from the Arab League since the invasion in 2003 came to Iraq and worked hard to convince the “national unity government” to start talks with the “Iraqi resistance” groups and other “opposition” groups. They wanted to find a way to end the fight over power and money and start to actually care about the country.

The plan was to hold the “national reconciliation conference” in Baghdad. Some even went too far in their immature brains and called for holding it outside the Green Zone. Little they knew about the country and the lack of security outside their fortified zones, obviously!

They failed to reach a compromise. Nevertheless, they decided to leave the country anyway, because they already promised themselves with some drunken nights and a tour in the city of the Sphinx and the pyramids. It’s for free, courtesy of the Iraqi people, those who were killed and those who are waiting in the line!

The conference was held, but without the needed legitimacy to call it a “reconciliation” conference. Several Iraqi groups boycotted the conference for many reasons, of which none was concerned with the Iraqi people.

The Association of Muslim Scholars, which is the Sunnis’ most powerful group, boycotted the event after complaining that its demands weren't met.

The association, many Iraqis and I believe, is behind a good part of the violence in the country. It sponsors at least 50% of terrorism in Iraq. Just a few weeks ago, the leader of the association, Harith al-Dhari, described al-Qaeda as “a legitimate resistance against the infidels.” And that is why they had to participate in the conference. If Dhari and his henchmen don’t agree, they will never stop what they are doing.

Only those, who are already in the government, participated in the “reconciliation” conference in Cairo. So, basically what happened in Cairo was a vacation for the Iraqi government.

But to say the truth, they issued a statement after the conference ended. After going through many deadlocks [imagine, deadlocks within the parties that are already together in the government] and many fights and talks, the conference agreed on (roughly translated):

- The Iraqi blood should be respected and the bloodshed should stop.
- The militias should be dissolved and those responsible for killing Iraqis should be brought to justice.
- There is resistance and there is terrorism and there should be a difference.
- The Iraqis, who are detained by the Iraqi forces and coalition forces, should be released unless proved guilty of committing crimes.
- Reconstruction should start in the country.
- The government should try to quell the violence and fight sectarianism.
- Train more Iraqi forces and make them responsible for maintaining security in the country.
- Compensate those who lost bla bla bla…

And other stuff that I laughed at when I heard!

Now, months later, what happened? What are the tangible results of the conference? More widows and orphans. And what “reconciliation” did the conference discuss if all the attendees were already participants of the government and see each other in the Green Zone everyday? And what good did it bring if the groups who opposed the government either didn’t attend or didn’t agree on what was said in the conference?

A few months later, Iraqi religious groups packed their bags and headed to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Shiite and Sunni religious decision makers decided to give it a shot and meet in Islam's holiest city and try to discuss the situation. Ali al-Sistani, the Shiites’ most revered and respected Mulla in Iraq and who leads at least 75% of the Shiites in the world, did not attend the gathering. He was busy doing……… nothing… seriously! Or maybe he thought it is not a big deal that thousands of Iraqis get killed a month and thousands of Iraqis are displaced inside Iraq and thousands of Iraqis are leaving the country to nowhere that they know.

Sistani thought it is not a big deal that the conflict in Iraq is mainly between Shiites and Sunnis. That the main problem is Islam and its different branches and he, as the man who is much more more powerful than the Pope for Christianity, had to say his word. He was busy doing…… nothing.

It doesn’t matter, the rest of the turbaned men decided, and left. The conference was held and the group decided that:

- The Iraqi blood should be respected and the bloodshed should stop.
- The militias should be dissolved and those responsible for killing Iraqis should be brought to justice.
- There is resistance and there is terrorism and there should be a difference.
- The Iraqis, who are detained by the Iraqi forces and coalition forces, should be released unless proved guilty of committing crimes.
- Reconstruction should start in the country.
- The government should try to quell the violence and fight sectarianism.
- Train more Iraqi forces and make them responsible for maintaining security in the country.
- Compensate those who lost bla bla bla…

[You should notice that I only copy pasted the points mentioned in the Cairo conference.]

One point in the Mecca conference that caught my attention: There is no difference between Shiites and Sunnis or Muslims and non-Muslims and that it is forbidden by God that and Iraqi kills an innocent Iraqi.

What happened since then?

More deaths.

A few days ago, some Sunni politicians decided to go to Turkey to find a solution for what Iraq is going through. [I don’t know why they look for the solutions outside Iraq. To me, it looks like I lose my wallet in my room and go look for it in the street!]

Without copy and pasting stuff, basically the Sunni politicians decided the same things the people in Cairo and Mecca conferences decided.

In the last two days, there was a conference for “national reconciliation” in Baghdad.

“We have always said that we are excited about the real national reconciliation,” Jalal al-Talbani, Iraq’s president, said in his speech to the audience in the conference. “Every time we said that we consider the reconciliation as reorganizing the people’s powers in all their factions.”

What is the point of holding a “reconciliation conference” anyway?

Maliki, the Iraqi PM, said the goal is to “rethink the political groupings and rebuild them on the basis of national interests and to form a national and wider front that would include all the political factions and be above the loyalties to other sides, which would open the way to professional individuals to run the country away from sectarian and party shares.”

Maliki called for all Iraqis to support the reconciliation conference. He said that the conference will discuss many issues, including the situation of the thousands of former Baathists, who were affected by Bremer’s famous dibaathification decree, and the Iraqi armed groups “who are not involved in crimes against the Iraqis.”

The goal is to bring all the sides, which are fighting each other over power and are killing scores of Iraqis everyday in shows of power, together and try to give each a bite of the cake.

To prove to the Iraqis that the invasion brought them “freedom of speech and information” and “democracy” and to show them that the government is only working to achieve what the people want, the conference was held behind closed doors!

Muqtada al-Sadr, one of the powerful anti-American Shiite leaders who also leads one of Iraq’s murderous militias, the Mehdi Army, boycotted the conference. Why? Because some baathists participated in it.

The Association of Muslim Scholars, the Sunni mafia, boycotted the conference also. Why? Because they are still thirsty for more Iraqi blood.

Iyad Allawi’s group, the secular one, boycotted the conference. Why? Because the others didn’t pay attention to the list of suggestions the group proposed.

Salih al-Mtlaq, leader of an important Sunni group called The Iraqi National Dialogue Front, boycotted the conference. Why? I don’t know!

Once more, the Iraqi government failed to bring the politicians, corrupted businessmen, turbaned Mullas, murderers and terrorists together to stop the violence.

Meanwhile, men, dressed in Iraqi forces uniforms, raided the offices of the Iraqi Red Crescent in central Baghdad and kidnapped more than 20 employees. And more than 50 bodies were found in and around the capital. The bodies showed signs of torture and were shot in the chest and head.

Now, do you really think the government and the politicians know what the problem is and what the Iraqis want? Do you think the government and the people are in the same boat?

I don’t!

A government that consists of almost a dozen parties that each one of them is an enemy of the other would never be able to lead Iraq. This “democracy” isn’t working. If anyone ever thought that this is “the rule of people,” well, you are wrong. This is the rule of the powerful and the death of the people. This is a jungle.

Bitter Sweet!

2006-12-11T23:43:00.000-05:00

I am away from home again. After fighting my way through hell to make myself feel at home in the States and after finally reaching that point, where I could say “home sweet home” when I enter the building in which I live, I packed my backpack again and hurried to the airport.

I left my place and went to Philadelphia to see BT and spend the winter break touring the East Coast.

I left behind dear friends who I won during the last three months. We hugged the night before. Carola gave me my Christmas present last Thursday. It was “The Art of War” pocket book. She knows what interests me! That night, we had an early Christmas party in school because most of us were leaving soon and we wanted to celebrate the end of semester anyway. It was a fun night. They wanted me to dance, but I don’t know how. Therefore, I decided to take dancing lessons next semester!

Before I left my place, I asked my friends to have fun and not to “forget me. Always remember that if I were there, the outing would have been much much more fun!”

On Friday, on my way to the airport, I got a message from one of my friends. It said “I miss you already… friends don’t ignore a friend. Friendship is being… just us, Omar. Be happy.”

It made me feel happy. Really happy.

In the airport and to pass time while waiting for my flight to Philadelphia, I sat to watch Friends on my laptop, as usual.[In the airport, if you find a stranger with headphones and watching friends, come talk to ME!]

While watching Friends and having fun [saying the dialogue with the actors,] I noticed some one sitting beside me giggling. I turned to see what was funny. He was watching something on his laptop too. It was Seinfeld! I imagined that it would be funny for a third person to see this scene.

The flight was ok. Nothing was interesting there to tell you about. The “fun” started right after I got off the plane in Philadelphia.

I had to…. well go to the restroom. So, I went to the restroom! Very normal, I thought. Little I knew that it will not be a bloody pee!

It was stinky and the floor was wet, not with water or any cleaning liquids but with dirty stuff [no elaboration on that.] So I did what I had to do, thinking about how filthy this airport restroom was. And then I wanted to leave. And bam. I didn’t feel a thing. I suddenly found myself on the ground facing the floor. Thank God no one was there. Although no one would care!

I cursed loud in both languages, Arabic and English, and stood up.

I saw blood on the floor. "Where the hell is that coming from?" I thought.

It was very cold that I didn’t feel that I injure myself. I looked at my hands. Here you go, my right ring finger was injured. Seriously injured. It was bleeding nonstop. I tried to stop the bleeding with a tissue, but it wouldn’t stop. So, I wrapped it with three tissues and left the restroom. It was still bleeding.

People saw me trying to stop the bleeding, but no one offered any help. They came to see why this hand is bleeding, made faces [but no words] and left. It made me feel alone. BT and a friend of ours were picking me up, but weren’t there yet.

No one offered to help. No one offered to help me with the bag. No one. No one.

Twenty minutes later my friends arrived. I offered on arm for hugging. I took care of the wound in BT’s apartment. It was big. A big piece of my finger got cut when I fell. I put it back and stopped the bleeding.

If I were in Baghdad, or anywhere near Iraq, people would have carried my bag and helped me get medical help. But oh Omar, you are not there now!

It’s been a hell of a happy time here the last three days. It is a nice city. People here are not as nice as where I live, but the place is gorgeous. It is cold, which I love, but not cold enough to make me happy and snow. For God sake I’ve never seen snow in my life and wish to see it. I am not leaving the East Coast before I see snow. Tell me where it is and I will go. Years ago, I decided to face Miss Liberty in NY and tell her some words. It was very difficult and crazy to think that I could make it, but I did last year! For God’s sake seeing snow should be easier and I will make it happen!

Today, while I’m enjoying my time here, I got this email from my cousin in Baghdad:

“As for us, I’m sure you get our news. Everyone is waiting for their turn to die. Life here is getting worse by the day. Tomorrow, we will yield for today. Schools and universities are not working. The government employees are barely making their way to their jobs…. Pray for us maybe God could save us because it is becoming impossible to live anymore. We have no other choice other than waiting for God to notice what is happening to us and help.”

Baker-Hamilton Report, Deja Vou!

2006-12-06T13:58:00.000-05:00

It doesn’t seem that the report is bringing anything new to us.

Although I haven’t been able to read the whole report yet, but I read the Executive Summary and have been following the notes that were leaked from the report before. It basically doesn’t invent any solutions. It only speaks loud what the Iraqis have been saying for years now, which is to return those who were dismissed from their jobs in the name of debaathification, release the prisoners who’ve been in jail for a long time for no legal reasons, rid the country from the militias that are killing thousands of Iraqis a month and improve the security forces and include Iraq’s neighboring countries in the talks, and other issues. The report just put these issues in one document and in an organized order.

The report and what it seems to suggest is very far from solving any problems in Iraq. It was a report written in the name of Iraq, but really was intended to address the average American.

To answer to the increasing demand to pull out of Iraq and bring the U.S. troops back, the Baker-Hamilton group worked and advertised for their attempts to calm the American public.

If we go back to what Bush said in his speech after he received the report today, we’ll find that he rarely mentioned Iraq in what he said. All what he wanted to emphasize on was that the congress should be working with the administration and that they both will find a way out.

The congress “won’t agree on every proposal and we probably won’t agree on every proposal. Nevertheless, it is an opportunity to come together, to work together on this important issue.”

What does this have to do with preventing 100 killings in Iraq today?

“The country is tired of pure political bickering that happens in Washington. But this report will give us all an opportunity to find common ground for the good of the country. Not for the good of the Republican party or the Democrat party.”

WHAT?

What country? I must be confused. I remember there were more than 3000 people killed in October. Was that in Iraq or America? Because from what Bush is saying, it looks like it happened in the U.S.!

I thought the report was to suggest solutions to stabilize Iraq and save the Iraqis from the mass massacre they’ve been living in for more than three years.

“The United States must not make an open-ended commitment to keep large numbers of American troops deployed in Iraq.”

But that’s not what the administration has been saying for four years now, even before the invasion. It was always promised that the U.S. will be in Iraq as long as it is needed.

I don’t get it. If the report believes that staying in Iraq is not needed now, it means that the Americans have never come to help the Iraqis. Because if scores of Iraqis are being killed every day in a brutal civil war and that doesn’t make the States committed to help Iraq, it means they only wanted to topple Saddam Hussein, which they did, and now its time to go home.

What shocked me the most in the repot is the way it urges the American administration to punish the Iraqis for what the United States and the Iraqi governments [since 2004] messed up and failed to solve.

“If the Iraqi government does not make substantial progress toward the achievement of milestones on national reconciliation, security and governance, the United States should reduce its political, military, or economic support for the Iraqi government,” the Iraq Study Group suggested!

And we all should know what that means. It is a Deja vou. It is what America did after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. To punish Saddam Hussein, the United States isolated the Iraqis from the rest of the world and starved them to death.

Is that the way American politicians solve problems? Just isolate Iraq again and cut the news from that part of the world and protect the Americans from hearing the horrible stories from their, we’ll be fine?

It worked before. 12 years of sanctions and more than 500,000 Iraqi children died and millions of Iraqis fled the country. Thousands died because they didn’t have money to buy medications or because there were no medications in hospitals. The education system went from one of the best in the Middle East down to NOTHING. The government was paralyzed and had no services to offer to its people.

Yes, that was under the name of punishing Saddam Hussein’s government. That was a real success!

Iraq In Numbers!

2006-12-04T21:11:00.000-05:00

The Associated Press published “Key figures about Iraq since the war began in March 2003.”

I thought you might be interested.

CASUALTIES:
— U.S. deaths as of Dec. 4: 2,901.
— U.S. wounded as of Dec. 4: 21,921.
— At least 68 U.S. personnel killed in November.
— Iraq civilian deaths are estimated at more than 50,000, with one controversial study contending as many as 655,000 Iraqis have died.
— At least 673 civilian contractors killed.

COST:
— Nearly $340 billion, or about $250 million a day.

OIL PRODUCTION:
— Prewar: 2.58 million barrels daily.
— As of Nov. 22: 2.04 million barrels daily.

ELECTRICITY:
— Prewar nationwide: 3,958 megawatts. Hours a day (estimated): four to eight.
— Nov. 22, nationwide: 3,600 megawatts. Hours a day: 11.
— Prewar Baghdad: 2,500 megawatts. Hours a day (estimated): 16-24.
— Nov. 22, Baghdad: not available. Hours a day 6.8.

TELEPHONE:
— Prewar land lines: 833,000.
— Oct. 31: 1 million.
— Prewar cell phones: no service.
— Oct. 31: 7.9 million.

WATER:
— Prewar: 12.9 million people had potable water.
— Oct. 31: 14.3 million people have potable water.

SEWERAGE:
— Prewar: 6.2 million people served.
— Oct. 31: 10.7 million people.

INTERNAL REFUGEES:
— Nov. 3, 2006: 1.6 million people.

EMIGRANTS:
— Prewar: 500,000 Iraqis lived abroad.
— Nov. 3, 2006: estimated 1.8 million abroad.

** Sources: Associated Press archives, State Department, Defense Department, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Brookings Institution, Iraq Body Count, The Lancet Web site, Iraqi ministries of health and education.

Repeating The Mistake, Intentionally!

2006-12-01T13:53:00.000-05:00

If a civil war were to happen in Iraq, “our Sunni brothers will be the ones to lose the most.”

That’s what Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the most powerful criminal group in Iraq, The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said last week.

What a powerful, full of hidden and obvious meaning sentence that was. I wonder how many hours or days he had to think about it to make it as smooth as it sounded when he said it.

Now we turned into a new era in Iraq. It is time to go public and threaten each other. Because you know what, the Unite States is, again, backing this up.

When Abu Musa al-Zarqawi, the late leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, called for an overall war against the Shiites in Iraq, the Iraqi government spared no efforts to call him “a terrorist whose goal is to divide Iraq and provoke a civil war.” Most of the lawmakers in Iraq condemned what Zarqawi said and called for Iraqis to unite.

Why when the poisonous turbaned snake, Hakim, publicly threatened his “brothers” the Sunnis, the government did not oppose?

Why did not the devil-Mullah’s speech get enough publicity in Iraq to give an idea what one of the country’s most powerful terrorist wants to turn Iraq into?

What was a total strange coincidence is that what Hakim said came just a few days before the White House leaked information about what the administration intended to do next: Back the Shiites and Kurds, who make about 80% of Iraq’s population, because that’s who you should care about. And leave the Sunnis to themselves and to the mercy of the Shiites.

When I read this in today’s Washington Post, I laughed. You know why? Because in Iraq, we have a proverb that could be roughly translated into “a huge catastrophe makes you laugh.”

What did the American administration do in the early days of the occupation in 2003? It was favoring the Shiites and Kurds and totally ignoring the Sunnis.

What was the result?
A Sunni insurgency, which the Iraqis are still paying a high price for and the Americans too.

Then what?
The American administration, after it was too late, realized that what it’s done was wrong and that they should try to solve the problem.

How?
Include the Sunnis in the political process before the 2005 elections to eventually be included in the government!

What happened?
Many Sunnis were already in prison, accused of insurgency. And their families were angered by how the Iraqi government and the Americans treated them. Many Sunni groups have already joined the insurgency an were blacklisted, so they couldn’t join the political process. Many Sunnis were threatened to be killed by insurgents if they participated in the elections. And the result was a “national unity government” that doesn’t include ONE member who would be willing to stay in Iraq and help. When the members were threatened, they left!

Now, because the White House is under pressure to bring home the American troops and to end the U.S. involvement in Iraq, suddenly the first mistake of ignoring the Sunnis seems to be the best solution.

It would be very easy to show the world that Iraq is stable when the media shows the Kurdish and Shiite leaders shaking hands on T.V. how can I, as a journalist, compete with this image when I cannot go to Anbar, Mosul, Tikrit, Diyala, Basra and other cities where the Sunnis are and show how pissed off they are?

How can I compete with an image of Iraqi leaders smiling and kissing, when I cannot go to the Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad and talk to people about how they feel?

The devil-Mullah, Hakim, threatened the Sunnis that they will be the only losers if they opposed what will happen in the next three months. [Empowering the Shiite militias to kill more Iraqis.] And then flew to Amman-Jordan on his way to Washington D.C. to meet with Bush!

It is true that the Sunnis make 20% of the Iraqi population [maybe less now with all the killings.] But let’s face it, they were able to destabilize Iraq and fail the American plans in the last three years.

When the U.S. ignored the Sunnis earlier after the invasion, it was a mistake. But now, it is not. Now, the want to apply the mistake again because that is the easiest way to solve the problem, not of the Iraqis but of the Americans.

The easiest way to show the world that America has won the war in Iraq is by telling the Iraqis “her you go. This is democracy. 80% of you is ruling the country.” And then the Iraqis themselves should solve the problem of sectarian civil war, although the Americans provoked it when three years ago and under the name of democracy, they called for a Shiite-Kurdish-Sunni- government with some other minorities.

“Our role is not to resolve those issues for them,” Condoleezza Rice told reporters last month! “They are going to have to resolve those issues among themselves.”

Nadya and Her Family Left to Jordan!

2006-11-20T00:43:00.000-05:00

The phone rang at about 6 a.m. today. It paused my every-night nightmare. The phone screen said “unavailable ID” which meant it’s Baghdad. Terrified of the news I could get from the other end, as usual, I picked up.

It was my aunt. She just felt she needed to talk to me. It was great to hear her laughing. I miss her. In Baghdad, whenever she felt sad or upset, she would call me to feel better. We get along very well, as I do with all my relatives. They know that if they feel sad, they should talk to me!

We joked a lot at the beginning. Then, we turned to reality. She told me the usual, that Baghdad is mourning its people everyday with no ray of hope that the black clouds would uncover my hometown.

This time I felt there is something different in her voice. She wasn’t as relaxed as she used to be when she told me the news. She eventually revealed a deep depression in her voice. She was so pessimistic, understandably!

I calmed her down and asked her to keep her faith in our ability to overcome this hard time and just wait. Maybe we will see the light at the end of the tunnel at some point. I didn’t believe what I was saying, neither she did I think. But at least I got to talk to her and hear the voices of my cousins in the background. That was enough to start the day with. Ten minutes later, we hung up. I laid back in my bed thinking about my future, if there is any.

A few minutes passed, and here is the phone ringing again. This time another aunt. I got suspicious. I thought something was wrong. Why would they call me at the same time? And it is a weekend here. They know that chances are I am sleeping.

“Nothing wrong. I just wanted to talk to you,” she said. “We miss you. It would be much easier time if you were here to joke about it.”

I couldn’t help it but to cry. At that point, I’ve had enough. The nightmare that I get every night and then my family calling me to say they miss me and the sadness I felt in their voices. It was like they felt they wouldn’t make it through the day and wanted to talk to me before they leave.

“Nadya and her family left to Jordan,” she told me, referring to one of my cousins. “She couldn’t take it anymore and had to leave.”

I knew something was wrong. We are a very close family. When one leaves, the whole family feels terrible. Now I get it: they felt sad and wanted to talk to someone about it. Nadya left. That meant four less persons in our gatherings and one less house to gather in. my family is suffering. [But who isn’t in Iraq?]

“I am trying to find a job outside Iraq or in Kurdistan,” she said. “We cannot stay here. it is getting really suicidal.”

Then she asked me about school and my life here. She asked me if I was having fun and I couldn’t say “Yes.” I felt guilty to tell her I am having fun here. it just didn’t feel right.

Yesterday, my sister in law called me. She calls me every other day to see if I am ok. “It is so unbearable here Omar,” she said. It was the first time she said this to me. Usually, she doesn’t say these thing because she knows that these things make me think about going back. But she said it yesterday. I knew it was serious. Four days ago, a man and his wife were killed in their car just one block away from my house. No one knows what the reason was.

“I don’t even go to the outside door anymore,” she said. I thought about my almost two-year-old nice. What is she doing the? How does she act as a child if all she does is sitting in a room?

I couldn’t take more bad news today. I wandered in the streets. I went to another city near the one I live in. I love that one because it is so beautiful. They already installed a huge Christmas tree in one of the corners there. It was beautiful and colorful. I was in the bus when I saw it. I looked at it and remembered our Christmas tree. I decorated it every year. It was a family tradition to have a tree in our guests room and invite all my relatives for New Year’s eve to have fun. They would spend the night in our house and spend the time telling jokes, dancing, being silly and many other stuff. But not anymore.

I was still thinking about the past when I got a message on the phone.

“I love you,” it said in English. I was like: cool, I have a secret lover here!

“my son,” it continued. So, it is my mother. Definitely, which was more important! “How are you in your studying? We miss you.” The message said and ended with a smiley.

“Habibti, I’m ok. I miss you all. I’ll see you soon,” I replied as saying.

Just a few seconds later, the phone rang. It was my Mom.

“The message said ‘I will see you soon’ what did you mean?” she asked in panic.

“Nothing. I just meant time will past very fast and will see you when I finish school in two years,” I said.

“Ok. I thought you were coming home. Don’t,” she insisted. “Don’t ever think of coming back now. It is so bad here. don’t come back please.”

I calmed her down and told her I wasn’t going back before I finished school. Then my father took the phone to talk to me.

“Listen, if we are going to die, you should stay alive,” he told me in his serious, yet fatherly tone. “you always told me you want to carry the name of our family and continue what we started. You should stick to that. I want you to do that and that means you don’t come back now.”

I talked to him and told him that all what I am doing now and all the tough times I am going through was to do what I promised to do, and what the family encouraged me to do. And that I wasn’t going back soon. Unlike my mother, he knew I wasn’t being honest. He felt there was something going in my mind but he didn’t want to talk about it. He knew he would lose the argument!

Good luck Naday. I will see you soon!

Feeh

It Seems There is No Bottom to This Hole!

2006-11-14T16:02:00.000-05:00

More than a 100 Iraqi employees disappeared today in Baghdad when men wearing Iraqi police uniforms swarmed a Higher Education ministry building and ordered the employees out!

How would a huge group of people, like this one, disappear? How could they be kidnapped? Where is the government?

All what we hear about now in Iraq is how violence is growing. The country is “on the verge of civil war” we keep hearing. If this is the “verge” of civil war. What does a civil war look like?

When more than 80 men, who, according to witnesses, appeared to be Iraq police, come in 25 police cars and take hostage more than 100 male employees from the Scholarships and Cultural Relations department of the Higher Education ministry_ which is located in Karrada in central Baghdad_ and the 20-minute-long episode was not interrupted by the government’s security forces, WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

When all this happened and Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq’s Prime Minister, goes on T.V. and addresses his terrified nation and say “"what is happening is not terrorism,” one might ask: So, what is this? And how do you define terrorism Mr. PM?

It is “the result of disagreements and conflict between militias belonging to this side or that,” he continued!

So, Mr. PM knows it is the ethnic and sectarian-motivated militias who are doing this. But, he doesn’t believe it is terrorism. Because, for him and his cabinet, terrorism is only when a car bomb explodes in a Shiite neighborhood and kills people. For them, terrorism is when the insurgents bomb a market in Ramadi and kill more people. For them and their backup, terrorism is when an IED kills an American soldier.

But the kidnapping of 150 Iraqis, and the kidnapping and killing of dozens of hundreds of Iraqis everyday, is merely a “political disagreement” that shouldn't be exaggerated and defined as terrorism.

Moreover, Mr. PM doesn’t try to solve the problem. Although, to say the truth, he has nothing in his hands that could be used to stop what is happening.

What did he mean when he said that kidnapping 150 Iraqis was only the “result of disagreements and conflict” between rivalries? Doest it mean “calm down. It is only disagreement that we will solve?” or it means “I cannot do anything. It is disagreement between the leaders of the ‘New Iraq’?”

And if you know, Mr. PM., that it is militias, why did you delay your genius crackdown on these militias? Although it meant nothing for the average Iraqis. While you lived in your Green Zone giving orders, over nice dinners with your new friends, to disarm militias and arrest their leaders, the very same militias continued killing my people. But at least you could save face by claiming to be working on that issue.

Now, what should the Iraqis do? No one is helping. The Iraqis must endure a horrible life and no one is even close to start helping them. They are left alone. Well, in fact I hope they are left alone. At least by then we could say “the Iraqis have done this to themselves.”

The minister of higher education, Abid Thyab, said he would close universities and institutes in Baghdad until the security situation is improved. [which to me means “until further notice!”

I don’t think the government and the American watchdogs in Iraq will allow the minister to go through with his decision. Because shutting down educational institutes in the capital will give the outside world that Iraq’s game is over. It will just show how bad the situation in Iraq is. And that means the Iraqi government and American administration will have to explain to the world what the next step should be. But, because there is no clear next step, they cannot do it.

No matter how many Iraqis were kidnapped or to be kidnapped, and no matter how many professors were killed in Iraq and will be killed, and no matter how many students were killed or forced by threats to stay home, NO SHUTS DOWN will be permitted. Because that means embarrassment for the Iraqi government and the American administration. What is more important you think?

By the way, not only 150 were taken hostage today, but also the news go on to say that more than 80 people were killed or found dead in and around the capital. But never mind, that’s the usual number. No harms!

It just seems like Iraq fell into a huge hole and keeps going down. I just wish there is a bottom to this hole so the country can at some point stop falling. It is the only way to start a new step. The Iraqis accepted falling into the hall because they thought there is an end to it. But they are still gravitating to the unknown.

America’s Midterm Elections

2006-11-06T16:57:00.000-05:00

This is an opinion piece I was asked to write as an assignment in school here in the U.S.

The piece wasn’t published [it’s a long story that I will talk to you about when the time comes to go public with it. But basically, I am having someone in school, who is responsible for publishing our stories, and now is trying to take anything I write down. I don’t know why, but I talked to people in school and if they don’t fix this, I am going public and will make it a big deal, because it is a big deal!]

Anyway, I thought you might like reading it. [I juts took the byline out. Well, you know why!]

-------------------------

A few months after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, rumors suggested that Iraqis would soon vote “democratically and freely” for the first time in decades. We were confused. The only experience we had in voting was in two referendums to decide whether Saddam Hussein should stay the “only leader and the hero of the Arab nation” in Iraq. That, of course, was more of a joke_ and a day-off_ than a true political experiment.

In the months leading to the January 2005 elections in Iraq, political campaigns flooded our country. Politicians rallied to sell themselves and we, Iraqis, listened carefully, spending hours analyzing their positions. When many risked their lives to vote on Election Day, we were at least informed.

Democracy is exhausting, but twice more, Iraqis have taken it seriously—for the constitutional referendum in October 2005 and the parliamentary elections in mid-December.

And, this is where our two democracies differ sharply. Here, in the full democracy of the United States, where Americans have lost thousands of men and women to violence around the world and the “war on terrorism,” it’s shocking how few citizens make use of freedom of speech and “democracy.”

A few weeks ago, I attended a forum in Tracy, California in which Democrat Jerry McNerney, and the incumbent, Republican Congressman Richard Pombo presented their platforms. During the session, people applauded their candidates, booed each other and showed nothing but stubbornness. No one demonstrated any willingness to listen and to think about the other side. At the end of the session, I failed to understand the point of having the debate-like session.

I understand that the polls suggest the Democrats will take control of the House of Representatives, but I find it hard to believe and don’t.

If the forum in Tracy was any indicator, democrats will always vote democrat, and republicans will remain with their party. The only chance for a change remains with the few who are open to voting for the other party and in my judgment, it’s too few to make a difference.

It is true that Americans enjoy freedom of speech and democracy, but do they have the “people’s power” to affect the decision-making process?

When the talk about a possible attack on Iraq was rumored after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration turned a deaf ear to the opposition. For its part, the media worked to prepare the public and gain support.

Because the administration was insistent that it was going to launch its second major military involvement in the Middle East since the Persian Gulf War in 1991, Americans had no choice but to read and listen to how the media reasoned the war on Iraq.

I was in Iraq when the last U.S. presidential elections were held and American friends told me then that it was a chance for Americans to correct the mistake and change governments. Did they? No. Instead, they bought, again, the promises of a more secure United States and “significant” number of U.S. troops coming home from Iraq by the end of 2006.

The political debates and discussions we see now, I believe, will change nothing.

People have already made up their minds. They already know who they will support. No matter what mistakes were made by the republicans, very few of their supporters, if any, are going to the polls on November 7 to demonstrate their anger and vote for a democrat.

The nearing midterm election in Nov. 7 is nothing but a “democratic” practice people will enjoy, especially those who just turned 18 _ because it is there first time to toss the paper into the box or press the screen.

Even if the democrats won the mid term elections this year, those hoping for a political change in the United States have to wait until the next presidential elections. It is then when the average American will have another chance to make a difference. Another chance to be a decision maker.

Ten Things I Hate and Twelve I Love About America

2006-11-02T18:15:00.000-05:00

Well, one of the most asked questions I’ve been asked since I moved to the States is “how do you like it here?” And I was trying to take notes all the time whenever I thought “here is something I like/ or I don’t” so I can answer properly.

I love living here. Of course I miss Baghdad, my house, my family, my colleagues back in the office, my beautiful and huge German shepherd dog, my room with all the pictures hanging on the wall, especially my graduation picture with all those who graduated with me that year in 2002, and I also miss my “purple” car [and I put the color in quotation marks because it is really dark blue, but one of my American friends insists that it is purple, which I like!]

Nevertheless, I have things that I hate here. Maybe it’s the cultural differences, or maybe it’s just me. But I do hate some things here.

So, why don’t I share this stuff with you guys!

Ten things I hate about America:

* People don’t understand that democracy doesn’t mean that people should be able to “walk in bikinis in the streets of Tehran-Iran,” because that is culture and you cannot force people to change their culture in the name of “democracy.”
* People believe that they have democracy and accuse the rest of the world of being “undemocratic,” when in fact they have freedom only in the U.S., which is a huge difference!
* People don’t cover their mouths when they yawn.
* They don’t give their seats to elderly or women in buses and underground trains.
* When they hear about people hit or abused in Iraq, they call it torture. But when the American armed forces and the CIA do the same thing, they call it “abuse!”
* Newspapers call those who killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis “insurgents.” But when someone plans an attack inside the U.S., even if only planned and was failed, he/she is a “terrorist.”
* They burp loud in public.
* They send their parents to the elderly houses or leave them to live alone when they are old and incapable of taking care of themselves.
* They don’t have or tell jokes.
* A husband and a wife are not one. They are separate entities and children are taught to grow into the same thing.

Now, twelve things I love about America:

* People are nice and helpful.
* I am free to do, eat and wear whatever I want as long as I don’t offend others.
* I can walk freely in the streets as late as I want [I hear about crimes and shootings, but I don’t care]
* People listen to you and always try to advise.
* Transportation inside the cities is really good. It makes my life so much easier.
* People love and cherish their feel of belongingness to their soil and they are proud of their flag. * Education system is great, for those who can afford it.
* They call their political leaders “stupid” and keep reelecting them!
* I don’t hear explosions and don’t wake up on the IED-alarm-clock everyday like I used to in Baghdad.
* There are traffic lights for cars and pedestrians, which most of the people respect!
* Junk food.
* I have many friends here. I wouldn’t survive the change without their support.

Feeh!

What Should Be Done?

2006-10-25T01:26:00.000-04:00

That is the question I was most asked since I’ve been here in the U.S.: what should be done?

I’ve been thinking about an answer for such a question for more than a year now. Since May 2005, when Ibrahim al-Jafari, leader of the Dawa party, was seated as the first “elected” Prime Minister in Iraq after the invasion in 2003. If you go back to the archives, you will find that it is then when the civil war started in Iraq.

Jafari permitted the criminal militias in Iraq to merge into the security forces, mainly to disguise in Iraqi police uniforms. Without going into his intentions or who was behind convincing or forcing him to issue it, the decision was the turnaround in Iraq’s future.

What should be done now?

Well, first lets see what is going on now: More than a 100 Iraqis get killed everyday. The cause of their death mainly is a direct shot in the head or the chest. Hundreds of Iraqis are being kidnapped weekly; men in black and men in police uniforms break into houses and arrest people. No one knows who they are. They just take their victims and disappear. The police or Iraqi army stand just a few blocks away from the kidnapping scene, either to point out the houses they “unknown” attackers should break into, or to basically do nothing but watch the whole play.

Also, Iraq lacks the basic needs of normal life: More than 600,000 Iraqis have died since 2003,most of whom were killed by violent actions; in more than half of the country there is no electricity, no water, no medicines in hospitals and clinics, no educational system; professors left Iraq; the youth fled and are fleeing the country fearing for their life; parents don’t send their children to schools fearing kidnappings and retaliatory killings; Iraqis wait for each other to make a mistake to have an excuse to kill each other; they started to hate each other and cant even accept living with each other; more than 9000 Iraqis have been displaced weekly since February, when a revered Shiite mosque was bombed down in Samarra north of Baghdad; people are in house-arrest because if they left their houses they could be killed; more than 1.5 million Iraqis are sheltering in neighboring countries plus 4 million already left during the 1990s; Iraq now is a three-province Kurdish semi-state, four-province Sunni semi-state, and a nine-province Shiite semi-state and a sectarian-ravaged Baghdad; no reconstruction is going in Iraq now whatsoever [except for Kurdistan, which is reconstructing since 1991!]; a five-year-old now knows if he/she is a Sunni or a Shiite, a Kurd or Arab and a Muslim or a Christian and knows that if they are one, they should hate all the others; the U.S. forces and Iraqi government always announced arresting “terrorists” but what happened to those who were arrested afterwards? No one knows. Any justice applied? I have no idea!

The government is doing nothing but fuel the violence!

We have given the Iraqi politicians more than enough time to resolve the problem, if they wanted to, but they’ve failed. And the current politicians leading the government will always fail. We have given each political groups enough power to Vito and decision made by others, which has made it impossible for any decision to be made AT ALL. Sine this government was seated earlier this year, have you ever heard of an Iraqi government’s decision that was made and the Iraqis actually benefited from? How could they decide if the Shiites Vito any Sunni proposal and vise versa? How could they when the Kurds cannot accept any Arab decision? We have given everyone enough power to destroy the country, and actually not allowing any repairs to be made. All this came under the umbrella of “Democracy.”

The Iraqis have been asking the government to rid the country off the militias that are killing Iraqis everywhere. Just when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki tiptoed in that way and actually started to press the militias to stop the killings, under the U.S. pressure that he would be replaced if not, Bush calls Maliki and tells him that the U.S. has no deadline for quelling the violence!!!! The next day, Maliki had a press conference in which he announced that he would slow down on pressing militias to stop killing and might deal with the issue “end of this year or early next year.” Also, he postponed to “further notice” the meeting of Iraq prominent figures, tribal leaders, politicians, religious leaders and other people who were supposed to sit down and have a treaty to prevent and Iraqi bloodshed to show the Iraqis a model they should follow.

With all of this happening, I still hear people stupidly calling Ahmed Chalabi a “thief” and Iyad Allawi a “Baathist.” Now, all the Iraqi politicians were breastfed by angels, but those two?

Now, what should be done?

The answer is:

TAKE Abdul Aziz al-Hakim [leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic revolution in Iraq], his son, Ammar, Hadi al-Amiri [leader of Badr troops], Muqtada al-Sadr[you know him], Ibrahim al-Jafari [leader of Dawa party] Nouri al-Maliki [PM], Muwaffaq al-Rubaie [he hold the title National security Advisor, but in fact he is no one] Masoud Barzani[leader of the Kurdish Kurdistan Democratic Party], Harith al-Dhari [leader of the Muslim Scholars Association, a Sunni group that has very suspicious links to the insurgents], his son, Muthanna Harith al-Dhari, Khalaf al-Elayan[leader of the National Dialogue Council, a Sunni group], Adnan al-Dulaimi [leader of the Iraqi Accordance Front, the biggest Sunni group in the parliament] and put them all in house arrest for further notice.

Those people I mentioned above are the reason why Iraq is the way it is now. They are the reason why the civil war started in Iraq. They are the ones that should be tried with Saddam Hussein for crimes against the Iraqis!

THEN, very carefully select ONE man to be the leader of Iraq for one year ONLY. And very carefully select the elite of the Iraqi educated people to head the ministries during that year. With no mention of sectarian backgrounds at all.

THEN, announce that this is the new government, like it or not! Because that is the way Iraqis understand for now.

THEN, sit with Iraq’s tribal leaders. Iraq is a tribal community. Everyone undermined this fact for a long time. All tribal leaders should sit on one table with the government and be told that “here is the money you are after. Take it and protect your areas against violence. Any violence.” Iraq will be stabilized when its tribal leaders were given enough money [because they are greedy] and if they were convinced that they are important and have a big role to play!

THEN, bring those “terrorists” who wee arrested in the past three years and execute them publicly in al-Tahreer square in central Baghdad. This way, Iraqis will see that fate of those who dare to insult the Iraqi blood and dare to kill and commit crimes of Iraq’s soil.

THEN, start reconstructing the country, first thing should be infrastructure, something that Iraqis could see and feel the progress with.

THEN, which is a year later; remember those we put in house arrest? Execute them in public. They are responsible for more than 600,000 Iraqi deaths. At least let the Iraqis witness justice in some of the country’s leaders, who spent decades planning its destruction.

THEN, tell the Iraqis that there will be elections to choose a new government. I bet they will choose the same government that led them through the last year!

Feeh!