I first read about it in the Muajaha , they had it on their front page. (RAPE! New violence in new Iraq). They don’t have that issue online and they are just very young Iraqis who are trying to get a newspaper running while they get their exams done. The article was written with the help of all the staff members in al-Muajaha , but the person who got most involved was Hamsa . A very brave young girl who was at the morgue one day when she heard about the nine year old Sanarya, if you are wondering why the morgue it is because the morgue is the only place where they have a forensic medicine department.
Quite independently Neela Banerji meets an American pediatrician who tells her about a nine year old girl who was raped and brought to her by Hamsa.
Neela has written about it:

Rape (and Silence About It) Haunts Baghdad Read it here or here.

When Hamsa went to find Sanarya’s house she had with her a British filmmaker, Julia has the only footage of the only time Sanarya was asked about the rape. Neela and I went to see the footage, it kills you.
Hamsa was great during the first couple of weeks, she protected Sanarya from her brother, tried to get her a place to live with her sister away from the family. She and the American pediatrician did as much as they could but the pediatrician was transferred and Hamsa has exams, no one has visited Sanarya for a while until Neela, Zainab and Linsey went there. She was back at her parents place and they are beating her. Today I have been with Neela to unicef to talk to people responsible for the child protection program, we are trying to figure out what to do and how to help the kid. I will go tomorrow with Zainab and Neela to Sanayra’s on an outing, just to get her out of that house, for lunch or an ice-cream and so that I can talk to her sister Fatin and see what could be done to help.
People I am open for suggestions. I am totally in un-chartered territory for me. Other than Unicef who should we be contacting? I have heard about SOS Save the Children but they are not in Baghdad and I wonder whether an orphanage is really a good idea concerning Sanarya’s case.

Neela suggest reading The Human Rights Watch report on the issue:

climate of fear: Sexual Violence and abduction of Women and girls in Baghdad

Fairuz has a song called “indi sika feek” which means I have faith in you / I trust you. It should be our national anthem. It says:

I have faith in you
I have hope in you and what more do you want.
There is nothing more I can give
All my sentences end with you.
I have faith in you and this should be enough.
I know we will be able to pull ourselves together it just takes time. If you stop thinking this way you’ll fall apart. Some people have sent emails saying that I am not as “witty and fresh” as I used to be. I am sorry it is really hard to keep your wits these days let alone be witty. I was reading some of the stuff I wrote last October, I wish I had the rage I had in me then. Now I just feel disappointed, my city is becoming fuck-up-central. It is frustrating, how long do you think the coalition forces can keep their cool in the face of the constant attacks? How are they going to deal with the constant sabotage of infrastructure? We have no country or government anymore; they used to talk about “nation building” we ended up with nothing.
An Iraqi reader who lives abroad sent me an email which he got from Iraq on the 7th of July. We’ll assign him the spokesperson duties today.

>Subject: A letter from Baghdad
>From:
>To:
>Sent: Monday, July 07, 2003 10:06 AM
>
>
>Dear friends,
>
>If you wonder why I haven't sent you anything lately;
>well, I started writing a long letter a week ago but
>while describing the extremely bad situation we were
>in last week (All Baghdad stayed without electricity
>for more than 3 days with very weak water or none in
>some places, plus a big fuel shortage for generators
>and cars), I was listening to the coalition
>broadcasting for the Iraqi people. They ware talking
>about all low priority stuff like printing "New
>passports" for Iraqis, Mr. Bremer attending a Symphony
>for the Iraqi Symphony group, and such stuff, without
>any mentioning of the fact that about 5 million people
>were living under a temperature of 47 degrees and
>without electricity and water for three days :-/
>You know, I reviewed my "dream list" back then; there
>was no "New passports" in it. It just contained three
>simple wishes: Electricity, Water, and Security.
>(This will make a nice motto instead of the old famous
>"Unity, Freedom, and Socialism", I might as well start
>a party of my own with this motto. It will sure make
>me very popular).
>Are such wishes to much to ask in the new millennium,
>and when you are under the occupation of the greatest
>power in the world?
>If you say be patient. Well, apart from the last 23
>years, remember the ex-regime has fallen for about
>three months now.
>
>Back to the letter I intended to write. So while
>listening to these great news, I felt so desperate and
>frustrated (Not from the Americans actually, but from
>the situation we are in), that I simply tore the
>message.
>
>The situation here is getting more complicated. You
>are hearing about the killing of the US soldiers every
>day. Neither me, nor anyone I know agrees to this.
>This should not be the way to solve thing. It is only
>making things worse. US soldiers are getting so tense
>in dealing with people. If such acts are not stopped,
>we will never have peace.
>
>There are also the destructive acts being done by
>unknown groups. They are destroying vital resources
>like electricity, water, and oil pipes.
>Some say they are people loyal to the ex-regime,
>trying to make things so bad to make people hope for
>its return.
>Others, say they are from Iran, just damaging the
>country.
>Some even say that they are done by the Americans to
>keep people busy with such stuff (A policy that the
>ex-regime used to follow).
>I, personally, am getting more convinced by the first
>opinion.
>
>What depresses people here is that there seems to be
>no short-term solution to all this. Electricity,
>water, and oil pipes are an easy target and hence we
>will always feel threatened, specially when we think
>of July and August ahead. "The true heat is yet to
>come".
>
>Nevertheless, we have no choice but to wait and see if
>the promises being given to us will be fulfilled, and
>lets only hope for the best.
> >As for other aspects of our life here:
> >- Do you know that the number of newspapers reached 73
>and the count is increasing. The same for Parties. We
>have two persons claiming the throne (if there will
>ever be one). People here have no respect for almost
>all of these parties. Most of them just took the
>buildings they like illegally and make them their
>centers. Imagine a party steals a building when it
>starts and expects to be respected.
>
>- The best job for anyone now is selling cold Pepsi on
>the road. The customers are often US soldiers trying
>to survive the heat. The amount of Pepsi trucks you
>see being unloaded everyday is incredible.
>
>- Finally, the mobile network, which is being
>installed by MCI, has started working. It is still
>limited now but it is supposed to extend to public use
>mid-July. Thy funny thing is that our code is the same
>as New York. So we are considered as if we are in New
>York!!!!!!!
>I will try to get a mobile soon. Then you can call me
>with very cheap prices because international calls to
>the US is always the cheapest and as you know - We are
>in NY :-)
>
>Some body living in Baghdad

have been in baghdad for two days now but didn't get a chance to put online what i wrote there. you can read the guardian column i wrote when i was there.
more importantly go read [Ishtar Talking] she writes from basra in arabic and i translate. does anyone know of another arabic blog or is Ishtar's the first? in case you are wondering, find out about Ishtar here and here

Basra has an internet place. only one. the other is the UN House but you have to have a press pass or be an NGO to get in, i have neither. i have "recruited" an iraqi woman from basra to start blogging in arabic.
The basra update will be written in baghdad. part of it will be on the Guardian tomorrow i think and the rest, which did not make it in the guardian will be posted here.

will be gone to Basra for a couple of days, no blogging no emailing.
in the mean time go take a look at G.'s photolog.

ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Iraqi WOMAN blogger Zainab.
Zainab has posted her first entry on [realwomenonline.com], she is not one of my friends and I have only met her two weeks ago, she found the idea of writing online interesting. I am eager to know what she will write as everyone else. go read her now.

The most insane city, I just can’t imagine a city where so much explosive metal is lying around. The latest in the line of stories which at the moment could only happen in Baghdad is an explosion the Karadah street, just off the main road. A photographer walks down that road and sees someone lying on the street with loads of blood around him and missing one leg. No one wants to get near him. The guy had a hand grenade in his pocket, the idiot. And somehow the detonator goes off, boom, bye-bye leg. The funny thing was that there were some people around the guy who looked around very nervously. No one would tell you what was going on. Until you meet the friendly small shop owner who knows everybody. He says the actual explosion happened in a tea-shop down the road where lots of no-good types meet. And the guy’s hand grenade blew up in that tea-shop but his “friends” were so anxious that no one comes in that tea-shop, snoops around and finds god knows what, they clean the place up real fast, drag him to the other end of the street and leave him there.
Why would he have a hand grenade in his pocket? Well, many reasons. I don’t think he is the fedayeen type, like that taxi driver I met a couple of days ago. It just happens to be the weapon of choice for house robberies, you can’t say no to a man with a hand grenade, can you?

I have started a photolog, I lost my camera after i took the pictures which are on it now. so i will post some of G's pictures until i buy another point and shoot digital thingy

Actually we have been having pretty bad days. If you would have talked to me a week ago and I would have told you that I am very optimistic; maybe not optimistic but at least had hope. Now I can only think of two things. One of them was something my mother said while watching the news. She was watching something about the latest attacks on the “coalition forces” and their retaliation. She said that she has always wondered how people in Beirut and Jerusalem could have led any sort of lives, when their cities were practically military zones, she said she now knows how it feels to live in a city were the sight of a tank and military checkpoints asking you to get out your car and look thru your bag becomes “normal”. When you turn on the TV and just hope that you don’t see more pictures of people shooting at each other.
The other thing was something a foreign acquaintance has said after spending some time in the city on a really hot day. He went in threw his hat on the floor and said loudly: “I want to inform my Iraqi friends that their country is doomed”. I have no idea what that was about but the sentence just stuck to my mind.
The last couple of days have been so eventful and I wish I have posted things daily because now I don’t know where to start. Lets go a couple of days back. Just before the Bremer administration decided that it could not delay the issue of the laid off military one more day.
The protest in front of CPA:
U.S. Troops Kill 2 Iraqis During Protest
It was a bad day to start with and things have gotten out of hand very fast. At around 9 the crowd outside the Saddam’s ooops Bremer’s Palace (isn’t it funny how power drifts to the same places), if you would have driven towards the palace entrance that morning in a car that looked like could be media people in it you would have people mobbing your car and hitting your windshields with shoes. The reaction that day towards media that day was generally very bad.

AP photographer Victor Caivano said the demonstrators threw stones at the soldiers and at reporters, who were forced to retreat.

an Iraqi camera man working for Reuter’s if I am not mistaken, was hit badly on the head and had to rescued by the American soldiers. And it kept getting more and more heated wheni got there the bullets were already shot and the blood was on a couple of demonstrators shirts, the big mass had broken up. Most of them left after a couple warning shots were fired in the air as a small convoy was approaching, and here is where it all went wrong. Stones were being thrown at the journalists and US army and someone in that convoy made the decision to point the gun towards the crowd not above it. Four shots were fired. Two of them wounding two Iraqis fatally (they were taken in by the American Army at the gate and both of them died inside) and two more were injured, one Iraqi was arrested.
I really do believe that the decision to shoot was wrong. They have fired warning shots so why the decision to shoot and kill? They had a very angry crowd which became even angrier after the shooting. Doesn’t say much about the ability to deal and control crowds. Bremer, having realized that the situation of the jobless military people is getting to a critical point. You don’t want military trained people deciding that you are the enemy. The decision came to start paying them salaries and to start a small military, something like 40k soldiers. which is fine with me, who wants military. Let’s just have a couple of them in cute uniforms parading on Liberation Day.

From that incident and until today things have been moving in a downward spiral. The “coalition forces” don’t feel safe and we don’t feel safe either. You can see the distrust in their eyes and the way they hold these big guns towards you when you move close to a check point. And if you ever drive beside a convoy don’t look out your window they would be having their guns pointed at you, aimed right between your eyes.
Some areas are better than others, you still see soldiers in certain districts very relaxed walking around and talking to people. Kids on their tanks or buying roasted chicken from a restaurant. They are on their edgier side when moving or on checkpoints. I don’t blame them; I hate to be in the situation they are in. I was hoping that the day when they would be moving in Baghdad in civilian clothes and browsing thru our markets, mixing with people was closer than it looks now.

I had the chance to go to a couple of bases and talk to people there. The most fun I had was at one in the south of Baghdad where to my surprise I guy came towards with a coke in his hand and said “shlonak?” [how are you? In Iraqi dialect]. It turns out he was born in Iraq and left to the US around 85. This is his first time in Baghdad since then. It was great talking to him. He came with the army as a translator. Told me about the really bad days in Samawah, and how he isn’t really sure he is glad he came back. he didn’t exactly have a very warm welcome, specially the last couple of weeks during the weapons searches. Do you remember the guy G. was telling you about, the translator? It was the same guy I didn’t know that until I told G. where I met him. He’s really a great guy, so talkative and fun. It is a shame that some Iraqis made him feel unwelcome because he was helping the “infidel invader”.

Scary war story #2
(#1 being the night when our neighborhood was attacked with 20 shells from a tank on the Ameriya main road)

I was trying to get a taxi at 10:30pm last night (which is a stupid and dumb thing to do in the first place – curfew is still at 11:00pm) so this car stops and we agree on a 2000 dinar fare. The moment I sit in the car he starts cursing and swearing at “them”. Suddenly he stops in mid sentence turns to me and asks angrily
- are you a muslim?
*he has a muslim looking beard, is angry and I defiantly don’t want to start a theological discussion with him*
- yes, alhamdulillah I am a muslim.
- are you working with “them”?
*oh dear this is not going anywhere good*
- No! of course not. Why should I?
Pause.
- so do you think if I hide a hand grenade under the dash board they would be able to find it?
*shitshitshit*
- listen I really think you should be careful they have equipment which is able to detect these things, you really shouldn’t carry a hand grnade around.
- aha! So you know what equipment they use
*fuck*
- no,no, I said they might have this sort of equipment.

just then we pass a US patrol; one humvee and a couple of soldiers on foot. He slows down and looks intensely at them. They are on my side and he leans on me to look out of the window. This is the point when I start wondering whether I will die from the explosion after the this crazyfuck throws the grenade or from the retaliation fire.
He decides to shout stuff and whizzes off.

I think I was in a car with a loony-suicide-fucker last night. I wanted to ask why he wanted to hide a hand grenade in his car but I was really really scared. He just might decide to stick the hand grenade down my throat, because it is Halal to kill those who are agents of the infidel occupier.
What do you do when you are in a car with someone who asks you about the best place to hide a hand grenade?

Now you might say that he is part of that movement which calls itself al-Auda [the return] and is planning attacks here and there (I wish people would stop calling them sporadic but I will get to that in a moment). What makes this guy even more dangerous is that he is not part of the Ba’athi underground plot to re-emerge. He is one of the loonies who have taken the call to Jihad issued by the Imam of the abu-Hanifa mosque seriously. And these people just play so easily into the hands of the Auda. Anyway this auda rumor needs some serious confirmation because I havn’t seen anything, banner or graffiti, that actually names them.

To get back to the “sporadic attacks”.
Take the events in Mushaheda village: Nine U.S. Soldiers Are Wounded Battling Pockets of Iraqi
[NY Times, requires registration]
A convoy goes thru the village and gets attacked, RPGs or Kalashnikovs are fired. It is night and the visibility is pretty low, as a retaliation and self-defence you have the convoy shooting left and right down the road for the next couple of kilometers (that if if they didn’t decide to stop and go into attack-mode - see what happened in Hir).
Now when you go ask the people in the village, district or neighborhood about the attacks they tell you the attackers were strangers, not from the area.
Think of it for a moment. If I wanted to instigate anti-american sentiments in a neighborhood which was until now indifferent towards the Americans what would be the best thing to do?
I would find a way to get the Americans to do bad things in that neighborhood, for example shoot indiscriminately at houses and shops

Sabaa Khalifa Makhmoud, 26, had finished cleaning his blue and white bus on the opposite side of the road from the American convoy and had just stepped out of the vehicle when the soldiers began shooting in response to the attack. One of his daughters, a toddler, was outside with him, and he scooped her up and ran inside their house. The shooting blasted out two windows in his bus and left a ragged hole in one of the bus curtains.

make them go on house to house searches, tie up the men and put sacks on their heads and scare all the children.
this would tilt your American-o-meter from the “I-don’t-really-care” position to the “what-the-fuck-do-they-think-they-are-doing?” position.
take a look at the attacks the last week and their aftermath. This sort of thing repeats itself and kind of snowballs from grumbles to calls for Jihad, just like what happened in the Adhamiya district near the abu-Hanifa mosque after the confrontation between Iraqis and American soldiers ended with two dead Iraqis.

what else?
There are rumors that a couple of high-tension electricity towers in the north have been sabotaged. Electricity has gotten worse, we get 5 hours of electricity a day in my neighborhood; it was so much better one week ago. People start grumbling again about the promises the Americans made and have not fulfilled.

more?

Two tank mines exploded on the streets of Baghdad, this is the third one. They are putting them in black garbage bags, the first exploded under a truck which was part of an Army convoy. One soldier got hurt.
The other two both exploded yesterday. The first in an underpass right in the middle of baghdad’s Tahrir square. It exploded under a taxi, no one was killed but two people got injured. The second exploded in Ghazalia district killing a girl and injuring her mother. Now this second mine was laid on the street after the American check point left that same street and the people there are saying that the mine was left by the Americans, which is complete bullshit.

(Sorry, I am all over the place and I was never too good in formulating an argument, but I hope I am making some sense there)
What I want to say is that these attacks might be sporadic and unorganized; but they do what the Ba’athists want to do, creating a very tough situation for the American administration to do anything good or to keep their promises, changing people's sentiments. adding more heat to a summer which is too hot already.

You walk leisurely by the river on abu-Nawas Street, enjoying the view, you stop when you get to the part where the palaces are and take a look (before you would just rush by that part). On the other side of the road you have all these nice houses, old, colonial style. Exposed brick. Very unobtrusive, everything here has the color of sand. Then suddenly everything jars

The New York Times house in Baghdad. take a look.
Wasn’t there a show called “real Life” on MTV, the one with 5 total strangers living together. They had the most awkwardly colored houses, now we have one in Baghdad. Is anyone interested in doing a “real life” episode about the NY Times house here? You have the cooky looking house and the strangers all you need is a camera

The king is back; well the “pretender” is here – one of them, I think there are three hopefuls.

"In Baghdad, Having A Good Heir Day"

He is the first of the wannabe-royals to arrive in Baghdad. and boy did he get an interesting reception, It was a mess fit for royalty. You would have already heard that he came in the first civilian chartered airplane, loaded with “humanitarian aid” journalists and his bags. His first stop was the royal cemetery where he was supposed to make a speech and meet “his” people. He got out of the car and immediately he had the traditional lamb-sacrificed-under –your-feet thingy happening to him, after that more sheep got the sacrificial treatment along with a couple of chickens and the meat was being distributed to the “poor”. There was a moment when the crowd gathering to get the meat was bigger than the crowd cheering for him. And there was of course the brave young man who pushed his way thru and snatched a chicken and ran off, everybody was after him “who cares what the king is saying, follow the meat”.
Anyway in he goes and gets instantaneously mobbed by the press, it was a scene to behold. I now have a clear understanding of what a “cluster fuck” looks like. It was hot. The mausoleum is tiny and has no windows and you had those hordes of journalists-gone-mad all wanting to have that special picture. You can see the guy (sorry the Sharrif Ali) muttering: “what the hell am I doing here?” under his breath. Somehow Al-Arabiya got into the burial chamber with him and got a quickie interview right there to the annoyance of the photographers. And then the Arabiya reporter ran out of the room shouting “where is my camera man? Where is my camera man?”. Oooh it was hilarious. Sharrif Ali was supposed to make a speech to the gathered honorables, sheikhs and instant-royalty types who were seated in the garden. The funny thing is that non of them saw him when he came out and stood on the podium. Cameras and reporters had him encircled. I had two people asking me if I could point him out for them.
He was sweating, it was so hot and they had him right there under the scorching sun, he had this smile pasted on his face and a tiny battery operated fan directed at his neck and held by one of his people. Have you ever tried to look dignified while you are wearing a dark suit and under a scorching sun? it doesn’t work, the moment that little bead of sweat start running down the arch of your nose I will start laughing.
After a couple of verses from the Quran and some shouts of welcome, we get to the speech. I was waiting for the moment he opens his mouth and look at people’s faces when they realize that he speaks pretty lousy Arabic. He has this cute accent foreigners have when they speak Arabic. OK not that bad, but he sounds strange, his Arabic sounds forced.
Very uninteresting speech, he even goes so low as to fish for cheers in the most obvious ways: better wages, no gasoline lines bla bla bla. The good thing is that he didn’t get the applause he was hoping for.
Next stop: press conference in a HUGE mansion by the river. More media mobs, more nonsense. There is no flame there to inspire a mouse.

We left the press conference 15 minutes after it started. Right outside the hall where the media was trying to get anything out of the Sharrif ali we saw a huge man shouting at one of his “royal highness’” aides. This is what he was saying:
“look you asked me to drive you people around and I said OK, they promised me lunch so why are they now not letting me in?” he was talking about the banquet that they were preparing. It was a fun day, it really was.
How these guys who were not even capable of organizing a press conference will manage to run a country is anyone’s guess. And I can already see how people will react to the people who will want to be called princes and princesses.

go read G.'s new blog.

"so after 8 long hours.....
the Americans left, confiscating 6 antiaircraft heavy machine gun bullets form over than 40 houses.
the Iraqis were furiously talking of Americans searching our women, confiscating our protection weapons, and stealing our poor little chickens."

go now I am toolazy to write anything these days, it is too hot. i have no idea how all those people from foreign can stand the heat.

and I was wondering when will he find out and if he will be angry because I didn't tell him. I think he isn't.

"How do I know Baghdad's famous blogger exists? He worked for me."

He uses words like "chubby" and "cherubic" to describe me. ewww. and what is so wrong about saying "thingy" a lot.

Ya Allah have mercy on our souls. The old state owned Internet center in Adil district has been taken over by anarchists and they are offering internet access for FREE. You just need to dial up a number, no password, no special settings. Whoever heard of anyone doing that?
About week ago a rumor spread that the Adil center has put up a sat dish and will be using the setup the Iraqi government used to have to provide the service. [Uruklink.net] is back. The people who used to work there opened the center 4 days ago; you can have an hour of internet for as little as 2000dinars. Take that you greedy sharks. The center is very well equipped, they put together 30 of their best computers and have a very good connection (ok so 30 computers in a city of 5 million is nothing, but it is a start). They even got military protection. The people who work there got a couple of soldiers from the nearest army checkpoint to take a look, the officer asked if it was OK for his men to check on their emails and stuff. The reaction the first couple of guys who came in was a very amazed “Wow!”.
Yesterday they put up a piece of paper that said: “we are happy to announce that you can get free internet access by dialing up this number”. A small little paper on the notice board. The telephone network is not fully operational, certain districts don’t have phones at all, but as I wrote earlier many of the exchanges that have not been destroyed or looted have been linked together. You will need to keep dialing for an hour to get thru but it works, I tried it.
Not a million bad things could have wiped the grin off my face when I read that little note.
Baghdad will also be getting its first GSM network in about two weeks. A couple of thousand lines as a first step, mainly for NGOs and Administration. I think it is going to be MCI who will set this up.
Radio SAWA should be playing the Stereo MC’s “Connected” all the time.

I really need to get something out of my system.
I got an email. After throwing everything and the kitchen sink at me they ask:

"How are your parents doing?
Ah yes, your parents. Salam, people are wondering."

Actually they are doing very well, thank you. My father was invited to an informal dinner attended by Garner the second week he was in Baghdad; he also met some of Bodine’s aides and has met some of Bremer’s aides a couple of times too. Not to mention many of your top military people south of Baghdad.
Seriously, not joking there.

Let me make a suggestion. Do not assume, not even for a second, that because you read the blog you know who I am or who my parents are. And you are definitely not entitled to be disrespectful. Not everything that goes on in this house ends up on the blog, so please go play Agatha Christy somewhere else.
My mother, a sociologist who was very happy in pursuing her career at the ministry of education decided to give up that career when she had to choose between becoming Ba’ath party member and quitting her job, she became a housewife. My father, a very well accomplished economist made the same decision and decided to become a farmer instead.
You are being disrespectful to the people who have put the first copy of George Orwell’s 1984 in my hands, a heavy read for a 14 year old with bad English. But that banned book started a process and gave me the impulse to look at the world I live in a different way.
go fling the rubbish at someone else.

Have I told you that my father agreed to act as the mediator in the surrendering process between a number of Iraqi government officials and the American administration here? He is a man with sound moral judgment and people listen to his advice. People at the American administration and many of the new political parties had asked him for consultation.
Did I tell you about the time when one of Bremer’s aides asked him what the difference between a tribal sheikh and a mosque sheikh is? They send them thousands of miles to govern us here and then ask such questions.
Did I tell you about his unending optimism in what the Americans can achieve here if they were given time? He is so much less of a skeptic than I am, we had our shouty arguments a number of times since the appearance of the Americans on our theatre of events.
You see, there is a lot that I have not told you about, and I don’t see an obligation to do so. You all hide behind your blog names and keep certain bits of your life private.
I think the things that were said in the email above and on other sites were out of line.
There is more

“It seems your writing is dedicated to proving two points, first, minimizing the American contribution to removing Saddam and then, proving what terrible things the US did to get rid of Saddam, so as to paint a picture that it wasn't worth it.”

As to the first. There is no way to “minimize” the contribution of the USA in removing saddam. The USA waged a friggin’ war, how could you “minimize” a war. I have said this before: if it weren’t for the intervention of the US, Iraq would have seen saddam followed by his sons until the end of time. But excuse me if I didn’t go out and throw flowers at the incoming missiles. As for the second point, I don’t think anyone has the right to throw cluster bombs in civilian areas and then refuse to clean up the mess afterwards.
Anyway.
I don’t really understand why among the 26 million Iraqis I have to explain everything clearly, are you watching the news? can't you see the spectrum of reactions people have to the American presence in Iraq?.
I was at an ORHA press conference the other day (got in with someone who had a press pass) the guy up there on the podium said in an answer to a question, that most probably the people who have had good encounters with the coalition forces were saying things are getting better and those who have had bad things happening to them were saying things are getting worse.
It is still too early to make any judgments, I don’t feel that I have an obligation say all is rosy and well.
Iraq is not the black hole it used to be and there are a bazillion journalists here doing better than I can ever do, they have a press ID and they know how to deal with stuff.
As to the question “why are you not documenting saddam’s crimes?” Don’t you see that this is not the sort of thing that should be discussed lightly in a blog like this one. And what’s with “documenting”, me tiny helpless salam documenting things that were going on for 30 years? Sorry to blow your bubble, but all I can do is tell you what is going on in the streets and if you think journalists are doing a better job of that then maybe you should go read them. One day, like in Afghanistan, those journalists will get bored and go write about Syria or Iran; Iraq will be off your media radar. Out of sight, out of mind. Lucky you, you have that option. I have to live it.

did some re-arranging on the last two posts, you can post to the past with this thing. and all the links were put in the right place.
Internet prices are getting steeper, now we pay 8 dollars for an hour. capitalisim! pah.
someone on al-Muajaha (before you start wondering, the "salam" who works for Muajaha is not me) was out in the streets a couple of days ago asking "where is saddam?". the best answer he got was from a 10 year old kid:
"Saddam is dead, he died five years ago."
well, that explains the mess.

here is the link to CIVIC, i should put it up in the links thingy on the left. Try to ignore the quote from senator Patrick Leahy right on top. it gets on mynerves but i still think what they are doing is important.

Pool side at Hamra hotel. Where every journalist wishes he had a room reserved. If they sit long enough there they could just forget that there was a war going on outside the hotel fences. Jennifer Lopez squeaking out of the speakers and cool $5 beers with over priced burgers and salads. “Please put these ICG reports aside I would rather work on my tan”. Stuff like that. They come in carrying cameras, sound gear or big folders with a red cross on them. Minutes later they are sipping on a beer wearing as little as they can.
Read simply refused to get out of the water, he kept telling me that the moment I would walk out of the hotel doors I will be back in Baghdad: no electricity, lines at gas stations, prices as burning hot as the weather and a life that looks as if it will never return to normal. You couldn’t define normal now anyway. Have you seen how a fish flips on its sides when brought out of water? This is how it feels in Baghdad these days. You are not even sure if what you say is going to get you a black eye.
I don’t swim. I sat reading a borrowed copy of the New Yorker. An article about the new X-men movie. All systems on autopilot, I really did wish something would happen that will make it impossible for me to leave. But there are things to do, people to see, life rolls on.

I was marginally involved in something that had to do with 24 pizzas and twice as many American soldiers. I shouldn’t be telling you about this, you will most probably be hearing about it from someone else but it was great. The faces they made when the car would stop and they would be asked if they were the guys who ordered the pepperoni pizza.
It is difficult, a two sided coin. On one side they are the US Army, invader/liberator – choose what you like, big guns, strange sounds coming out of their mouths. The other side has a person on it that in many cases is younger than I am in a country he wouldn’t put on his choice of destinations. But he has this uniform on, the big gun and those darkdark sunglasses which make it impossible to see his eyes. Difficult.
Hamra swimming pool is easier.

The Iraqi Central Bank should open on the 31-5; banks should follow the day after. It was said that the first couple of days the banks will exchange the 10,000 dinar bill for dollars in a gesture that would show that the bills are OK hoping that the way they have been devalued would stop. Your 10,000 bill is still going for 7000 dinars if you find someone who would buy it from you.
There is another strange story I have been hearing relating to the Iraqi dinar. Mainly in gas stations because they are the places with the most income these days, after the day is over and they want to close down. A US army car would come and exchange the Iraqi Dinars for US Dollars at the day’s exchange rate and the Iraqi dinars would be burnt at the spot. I heard this story three different times.
It is not as surreal as it sounds. Saddam printed more Iraqi dinars than the system could support. Too many dinars on the market, the value goes down and the real value is distorted. If the burning is happening then they are decreasing the amount of paper (dinars) that is on the market creating a demand and pulling the value of the dinar up, so it is not a “bad thing”. I don’t see a reason to be as alarmed as the people who told me the stories were.
You know the expression “armchair psychologist”? Well, I am the best “armchair financial analyst” you’ll find this side of the net.
Talking about the net, I wonder when and who will be the first to use [.iq] in their URL. It was not used by the Iraqis during the days of saddam.

Good news :
Any Iraqis reading this? Spread the word. If you have family, relatives, friends in Baghdad and their phone number starts with [555] [556] [557] you can call them form wherever you are. Normal international call. An ingenious Iraqi communication engineer put up a dish on top of the Dawoodi exchange and set up a number of phone booths for people to make phone calls abroad. Cheaper than the Thuraya sharks. They have banners on the Dawoodi exchange building saying “communication with the outside world possible here”.
The happy side-effect is that when there isn’t too much traffic the calls get directed as usual to your phone at home if you are on that particular exchange. He is making the south-western district of Baghdad very happy. Anyway. If you are an Iraqi or know one, spread the word. Start dialing.
Update : the Dawoodi exchange has been linked to the exchanges in Baghdad-al-jadeeda, Amin and Zayoona areas. These are numbers starting with [77X], I guess you should try anything within Baghdad that does not start with [541 or 542]. We can’t call you from home but you can call us.

The Iraqi dinar is having the roller-coaster ride of a life time. 2000 for a dollar today, 950 the next, 1350 ten hours later. And down again. There is no logical explanation, at least an explanation an ignoramus like me would get.
If you were me these days you would be meeting very interesting people. There was a very long talk with mark from [Boar.com] who was on a two-day trip in Iraq. I met him after he was in one of the presidential palaces looting. He had a stainless steel teapot hidden under his t-shirt when he came into the hotel where we were supposed to meet. Pah, amateur amrikaan! At least choose something that looks like it could be gold or something.
Don’t ask how we met, pure coincidence. We sat there for about two hours, talktalktalk. He was strangely gadget free; he only had a nifty digital camera and showed me the pictures he had taken inside the palace including the obligatory picture of a bathroom. Everybody has a fixation on bathrooms. The first images they showed of one of the palaces had shots of not-so-significant bathrooms. I am sure there will be a (Saddam bathrooms) special on one of the shows soon. Anyway. Great guy. mark not saddam.

A day before that I sold my soul to the devil. I talked to Rory from the Guardian.
Look, he paid for a great lunch in a place which had air-conditioning and lots of people from foreign. It was fun talking to him but when Raed saw me after “the talk” he said I looked like someone had violated me. So there is a bit of guilt. But that was washed away with the cool air-conditioning. Yeah, I am cheap like that. I would sell my parents for a nice bottle of wine.
You know how much you would pay for a pizza before [attack of the media types II] started? 2500 dinars, a bit more than one dollar.
Do you know how much it costs now? 6000 dinars, a little less than 6 US dollars. Plus the exchange rate is totally fucked up and the real estate market is getting bizarre. You can follow the trail of the foreigners by how much things cost in a certain district. Of course Rory didn’t buy me the 6000 dinar pizza, that would have been too cheap, he paid an extra 3 dollars.

So the “interim Iraqi government” got screwed. Quelle surprise!!
Not too hot about any of them anyway and this way we get to blame the Americans for the screwing up of our future. They have been involved in creating the mess we are in now, they should take responsibility in helping us clear it up. Ummm, let’s put it this way so no one gets pissed off: Pretty please with sugar on top, don’t leave now and let the loony mullahs stick me on a pole and leave me in the sun to think about my “Sins”.
Postponing the handover of government to Iraqis is a “good thing”, it gives everybody time to think and cool down. US army patrols going together with Iraqi police patrols is a very “good thing”. Another “good thing” is the move on militias. There are now serious talks with the PUK and PDK about the Peshmergah and with the FIF (free Iraqi forces – what a pretentious name for a couple of amateurs who ended up stealing cars in Baghdad). The FIF are now saying that they have nothing to do with Chalabi’s INC (Yeah right, and my name is Mickey Mouse) just so that the INC doesn’t get a smack on its butt.
Note to self: Really should think about doing an Iraqi cover of “smack my bitch up”, I would call it “smack the INC up”. The video would have a Chalabi double swimming naked in the dollars he stole from Petra Bank.
To the 100 political parties we already have a new one was added and I just realized that one has disappeared. We now have something calling itself (Liberal Democratic Front) and the (Iraqi Intellectuals something-or-other) just left the show after its leader Bustam was arrested by the Americans. He was released but you never heard a peep from them again, Bustam is a character who has a lot of question marks floating about him like flies on shit, he probably thought he’ll just pack it in before the stink got out.
Where are those “Democracy for dummies” books I asked you to bring along?
I tell you, life these days is like watching things in a kaleidoscope. Whenever you turn it you see something interesting.

A quick update on Raed’s work with CIVIC. Nasiriyah is worse than they have imagined, 1500 casualty forms filled in less than a week. The group there has been expanded to 25. The volunteers are met with all sorts of reactions. In small communities where the people have not seen anybody yet asking them how they were and if everything is OK, the volunteers are being treated like local gods and saviors. In other places they have been accused of being Wahabis (very bad. Being accused of being Sunni extremist in a Shia area these days is as bad for your health as a bullet in the head – if I am quoting Ice Cube in reverse does he become Cube Ice?). In other areas they were accused of being conspirators in the Western-Zionist plot to annihilate Islam (ok, that was only one guy and he probably was not in possession of all his marbles).
Raed said that this week’s trip was more dispiriting than the week before. Something in the Nasiriyah electricity station exploded, this station feeds most of the southern areas with the exception of Basra. Between Karbala and Diwaniya the grid is down. Nasiriayh does not have drinking water at all and people are drinking untreated river water, you can imagine what that will do. An hour and a half down the road is Basra where the RO Water is now more than they need but no one is driving water tanks to Nasiriyah.
The type of “humanitarian aid” reaching the southern governorates turns the situation into a sick comedy. Nasiriayh Hospital got 20 boxes; six of them had only shampoo in them.
Need a blood transfusion? Have shampoo, it smells nice.
Another four or five were full of past-use-date stitching thread. In Basra the trucks of “humanitarian aid” coming from Saudi Arabia have crates of Pepsi in them. The Pediatric ward there is running out of medicine to suppress a fever, but they do have Pepsi. If this was in a movie it would be hilarious.

CIVIC is also trying to work with [Human Rights Watch] and [Handicap] since CIVIC already has the network of young Iraqis all over getting the help to where it is needed will be a bit more efficient.
Look, I had this long talk with a number of people about what CIVIC is doing, where the money is coming from and all. Not even Raed, who has been very enthusiastic about what Marla is trying to do and has done in Afghanistan with Global Exchange, he is not very sure about how Marla is going to secure the funds for the huge job they want to do. I saw her today and she said that they will be getting a grant, but from whom?
The reason why we finally decided that it is good and OK is because no other organization has shown any interest until now to check on the number of civilian casualties in this war. The US administration in Baghdad flatly refused to do that. CIVIC people (this means Marla and Raed, plus 150 Iraqi volunteers) are, for the moment at least, the only people you can go to ask about civilian casualties and maybe later, after the information has been gathered something more meaningful can be done with it, more than just a statistic on paper.

One tiny bit of interesting news before I end this post.
The CIA is contacting Mukhabarat agents for possible cooperation. I swear I am not making this up. Officially there is something called a black list and gray list and pick-ur-color list, but what is happening behind the scenes is that they want to get three different groups.
The agents who were involved in work concerning the USA, they get shaken down for whatever they know and probably will be put on trial for various crimes.
The people who were involved in work concerning Russia, they are being called to interviews selectively.
And the people whose specialty was Iran, they are welcomed, asked if they would be kind enough to contact their colleagues and would they be interested in coming aboard the groovy train?
Sorry this is just wrong, Mukhabarat? You wouldn’t get your Mukhabarat ID if they didn’t know you were a sick fuck who would slit his mother’s throat to get up the party ladder. Or does Bremer’s “de-baathification plan” not include the secret service types?

So do I have the CIA on my trail now? They would have to stand in line behind the INC, FIF, Hawza and every other Islamist party in Iraq.