A Letter From Baghdad
By Farnaz Fassihi
01 October, 2004 by
CommonDreams.org
A Wall Street
Journal Reporter's E-Mail to Friends
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 Fassihi,
a Wall Street Journal reporter sent this report as an e-mail