"Today Is Better Than Tomorrow"
By Dahr Jamail
TomDispatch.com
Iraq as a living hell.
The situation in Iraq has reached such a point of degradation and danger that I've been unable to return to report - as I did from 2003 to 2005 - from the front lines of daily life. Instead, in these last months, I have found myself in a supportive role, facilitating the work of some of my former sources, who remain in their own war-torn land, to tell their hair-raising tales of the new Iraq. While relying on my Iraqi colleagues to report the news, which we then publish at Inter Press Service and my website, I continue to receive emails from others in Iraq, civilian and soldier alike.
What I know from these emails is that the articles on Iraq you normally read in your local newspaper, even when, for instance, they cover the disintegration of the Iraqi health system or the collapse of the economy, are providing you, at best, but a glimpse of what daily life there is now like. After all, who knows better what's happening than those who are living it?
I thought I might just give you a taste of the sort of private communications I read every day. Take my primary interpreter during my eight months in Iraq, Abu Talat. He was finally forced, like hundreds of thousands of his fellow Iraqis, to flee to a neighboring country due to the nightmarish security situation in Baghdad. Without a regular income, he struggled even to pay the rent for an apartment in a Syrian city, and finally had little choice but to return to Baghdad to sell what was left of his belongings. On November 18th, he wrote me from there:
I am trying to sell my car. However, prices have plummeted so low that there is barely any active automobile dealing here, or any other marketing for that matter ... Life ends at around 2-3 p.m., at which point Baghdad changes into a city of horror. The sounds of mortars and clashes erupt all through the night. (Two explosions just rumbled nearby, but we can't tell the exact location.)
The next day he wrote:
Today, while I was arranging for the car to be sold at the highest price I could find, explosions burst almost 50 meters from the place where I was standing. I was forced to hide under the car I was selling for over 2 hours. There were ongoing clashes between the Iraqi Army and resistance fighters in broad daylight in the middle of the capital!
Even from semi-independent, Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, often described as the most peaceful and prosperous region in the country, the news I get is bleak. A November 28th email from a Kurdish friend (who is also a U.S. citizen) went this way:
It is worse than ever. The problem is that our U.S. government and the Iraqi 'Government' tell the world that things are improving here when they are not. All of the rebuilding bull crap is nothing but a scam that is worse than the oil-for-food program
. We have ONE hour of electricity a day now. I have power to turn on some lights and my computer by way of a little generator that I hooked up to my office today. A gallon of gas costs over $4 now, when the salary of an engineer is less than $200 a MONTH.
Terrible as life is when Iraqis across the country find themselves essentially camping out in their own homes with few or no basic services, it pales in comparison to life in Baghdad, the country's capital and home to nearly one quarter of its population. A friend of mine, who works there as a freelance cameraman, sent me this grim summary a couple of weeks ago:
Life here in Iraq has become impossible because of the militias, sectarian violence, and the occupation forces. Every day we see the dead bodies near our homes which have been killed by militias. We watch how the U.S. troops see these dead bodies and ... do nothing to stop this violence. Two of my brothers just left their houses and rented a new place because they were living in a Shia area. They had to run away just because they are Sunni.
Every day the U.S. troops raid so many houses in my area and arrest so many innocent people. Yet, when the Americans arrest one of the militia members they release him the very next day! Why?
I hope I can show you how the dogs have started eating the dead bodies which lie in the streets of Baghdad now. I filmed one of the dead bodies while there was a dog eating on it. The U.S. troops and Iraqi police leave the dead bodies in the streets for one or two days ... I think they intend to do this because they want everyone, including the children, to see this. Three days ago my young son saw some of the Shia militia as they killed an innocent Iraqi in front of his eyes just near his school.
Oh Dahr, I don't know what to say about my wounded country. Every Iraqi wants to bomb himself because of this shit life. Now Iraq is nothing like it was when you were here last, as bad as it was then. It has become very difficult to find someone who smiles. Everyone is sad and crying. This is true and this is our life now.
The problem is that I know everything because I am filming so many people who are suffering.
Then there are the emails I get from American soldiers or their family members. In late October, I received one from a mother whose son is a Marine stationed in Ramadi where the fighting between U.S. forces and Sunni insurgents has been fierce and ongoing these last months. "Many, many atrocities on both sides," she writes,
because of course the town has deteriorated into nothing more than a horror flick. His emails are few because his outpost was mortared and he lost computer connection with me. He has to go to the Army side of the city and try to send email from there. I've gotten one email. The marines are not supplying the boys with working satellite phones. Instead they give those, along with money for bribes, to the Iraqis in hopes of obtaining information. So our marines sit there (only 400 patrolling half of Ramadi, a town of 400,000 ... talk about war crimes). This is such a nightmare. If my son survives, he'll be embittered forever ... This is a portion of his angry email.... I found it very disturbing.... please excuse the spelling, he's in a hurry and exhausted when he writes.... his point is to kill the Iraqis before they kill him. Now it's just a race for life. Insane.
Her son's email reads in part:
I was gonna call you but the phone is broken. I hate this place more than anywhere else i've been. I guess is a compilation of all the time I've done overseas fighting. Bullshit fights, its really bringing me down. I can't wait till all this is over ... I'll be the biggest anti-war person this country will have ... at least against this war in Iraq.... Let's go fight a different one somewhere else cause this one is lost. I swear i wish you could spend a week over here ... you would know it's lost. You can't stop 'holy warriors,' especially in their territory. Tonight we are about to go drop off generators to the enemy (Iraqi civilians) hoping they will give us info about the enemy (bullshit storys). The shit your tax dollars go to would make you puke. You really would puke. I almost do when i think about it.... thomas jefferson would have a heart attack if he saw all the shit goin on today. Oh well. I really hope it changes soon when Bush is out ... but i doubt it. I thinks its all Gods plan...he runs the show no matter what. Fate and all that ... its good to trust him.
... I'll keep the machine gun lubed in hopes of killin em all at the first opportunity for you. I love you ma and i know that no matter what you support me. I hope you don't find this email burdensome. Just hit delete if that's the case. ..........
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/121106F.shtml
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
