9/29/2004 2:58:10 PM
E-mail by Wall Street Journal
reporter Farnaz Fassihi
Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days
is like being under
virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that
lured me to this job: a chance to see the world,
explore the exotic, meet new people in far away
lands, discover their ways and tell stories that
could make a difference.
Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq
has defied all those reasons. I am house bound. I
leave when I have a very good reason to and a
scheduled interview. I avoid going to people's homes
and never walk in the streets. I can't go grocery
shopping any more, can't eat in restaurants, can't
strike a conversation with strangers, can't look for
stories, can't drive in any thing but a full armored
car, can't go to scenes of breaking news stories,
can't be stuck in traffic, can't speak English
outside, can't take a road trip, can't say I'm an
American, can't linger at checkpoints, can't be
curious about what people are saying, doing,
feeling. And can't and can't. There has been one too
many close calls, including a car bomb so near our
house that it blew out all the windows. So now my
most pressing concern every day is not to write a
kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our
Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am
a security personnel first, a reporter second.
It's hard to pinpoint when the 'turning point'
exactly began. Was it April
when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the
Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi
declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when
Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq's population,
became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or
was it when the insurgency began
spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni
triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President
Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If
under Saddam it was a 'potential' threat, under the
Americans it has been transformed to 'imminent and
active threat,' a
foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United
States for decades to come.
Iraqis like to call this mess 'the situation.' When
asked 'how are thing?' they reply: 'the situation is
very bad."
What they mean by situation is this: the Iraqi
government doesn't control most Iraqi cities, there
are several car bombs going off each day around the
country killing and injuring scores of innocent
people, the
country's roads are becoming impassable and littered
by hundreds of
landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill
American soldiers, there are assassinations,
kidnappings and beheadings. The situation,
basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war. In
four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured
in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that
the ministry of health -- which was attempting an
exercise of public transparency by releasing the
numbers -- has now stopped disclosing them.
Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.
A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr City
yesterday. He said young men were openly placing
improvised explosive devices into the ground. They
melt a shallow hole into the asphalt, dig the
explosive, cover it with dirt and put an old tire
or plastic can over it to signal to the locals this
is booby-trapped. He said on the main roads of Sadr
City, there
were a dozen landmines per every ten yards. His car
snaked and swirled to avoid driving over them.
Behind the walls sits an angry Iraqi ready to
detonate them as soon as an American convoy gets
near. This is in Shiite land, the population that
was supposed to love America for liberating Iraq.
For journalists the significant turning point came
with the wave of abduction and kidnappings. Only two
weeks ago we felt safe around Baghdad because
foreigners were being abducted on the roads and
highways between towns. Then came a frantic phone
call from a journalist female friend at 11 p.m.
telling me two Italian women had been abducted from
their homes in broad daylight. Then the two
Americans, who got beheaded this week and the Brit,
were abducted from their homes in a residential
neighborhood. They were supplying the entire block
with round the clock electricity from their
generator to win friends. The abductors grabbed one
of them at 6 a.m. when he came out to switch on the
generator; his beheaded body was thrown back near
the neighborhoods.
The
insurgency, we are told, is rampant with no signs of
calming down. If any thing, it is growing stronger,
organized and more sophisticated every day. The
various elements within it - baathists, criminals, nationalists and Al
Qaeda -
are cooperating and coordinating.
I went to an emergency meeting for foreign
correspondents with the military and embassy to
discuss the kidnappings. We were somberly told our
fate would largely depend on where we were in the
kidnapping chain once it was determined we were
missing. Here is how it goes: criminal gangs grab
you and sell you up to Baathists in Fallujah, who
will in turn sell you to Al Qaeda. In turn, cash and
weapons flow the other way from Al Qaeda to the Baathisst to the criminals. My friend Georges, the
French journalist snatched on the road to Najaf, has
been missing for a month with no word on release or
whether he is still alive.
America's last hope for a quick exit? The Iraqi
police and National Guard
units we are spending billions of dollars to train.
The cops are being
murdered by the dozens every day
- over 700 to date -
and the insurgents are infiltrating their ranks.
The problem is so serious that the U.S. military has
allocated $6 million dollars to buy out 30,000 cops
they just trained to get rid of them quietly.
As for reconstruction: firstly it's so unsafe for
foreigners to operate that
almost all projects have come to a halt. After two
years, of the $18
billion Congress appropriated for Iraq
reconstruction only about $1 billion or so has been
spent and a chuck has now been reallocated for
improving security, a sign of just how bad things
are going here.
Oil dreams? Insurgents disrupt oil flow routinely as
a result of sabotage
and oil prices have hit record high of $49 a barrel.
Who did this war exactly benefit? Was it worth it?
Are we safer because Saddam is holed up and Al Qaeda
is running around in Iraq?
Iraqis say that thanks to America they got freedom
in exchange for
insecurity. Guess what? They say they'd take
security over freedom any day, even if it means
having a dictator ruler.
I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if Saddam
Hussein were allowed to run for elections he would
get the majority of the vote. This is truly sad.
Then I went to see an Iraqi scholar this week to
talk to him about
elections here. He has been trying to educate the
public on the importance of voting. He said,
"President Bush wanted to turn Iraq into a
democracy that would be an example for the Middle
East. Forget about democracy, forget about being a
model for the region, we have to salvage Iraq before
all is lost."
One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond
salvation. For those of us on the ground it's hard
to imagine what if any thing could salvage it from
its violent downward spiral. The genie of terrorism,
chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this
country as a result of American mistakes and it
can't be put back into a bottle.
The Iraqi government is talking about having
elections in three months
while half of the country remains a 'no go zone'
- out of the hands of
the government and the
Americans and out of reach of journalists. In the
other half, the disenchanted population is too
terrified to show up at polling stations. The Sunnis
have already said they'd boycott elections, leaving
the stage open for polarized government of Kurds and
Shiites that will not be deemed as legitimate and
will most certainly lead to civil war.
I asked a 28-year-old engineer if he and his family
would participate in the Iraqi elections since it was the first time
Iraqis could to some degree
elect a leadership. His response summed it all: "Go
and vote and risk being blown into pieces or
followed by the insurgents and murdered for
cooperating with the Americans? For what? To practice democracy? Are you joking?"
-Farnaz
....back to:
....alternative news
American Pictures
....gives Moore
thanks
....gives pizza
.....gives the plane truth
....gives
liberation
.....gives you the
blues
......gives Bush a human face
.....gives billionaires for Bush a free rap
....gives you the
world vote on Bush-Kerry
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