Living
A Disaster In Iraq
By Dahr Jamail
30 November, 2004
Dahrjamailiraq.com
The cold winter winds sweep over Baghdad
and the refugee camps strewn about the city. Date palms sway as dust
blows down the clogged streets where people huddle in their cars while
waiting in petrol lines several miles long.
The cost of fuel
now in the black market is 10 times what it normally is, and people
either pay it or wait for 8 hours in a gas line, with no guarantee that
the station of their choice wont run dry before they get a chance
to fill their tank.
Traffic jams form
often when military patrols rumble down the street
cars stacked
up behind them, nobody daring to venture too close to the heavy machine
guns wielded by soldiers with their faces covered by goggles and masks.
Already today 2 soldiers were killed and three wounded by a roadside
bomb in the northwest section of the capital. Also, up near Kut in eastern
Iraq, another soldier was killed and two wounded in a vehicle
accident.
The fuel crisis
is driving the cost of everything up-vegetables, fruit, meat, you name
it.
We are living
a disaster, says Abu Abdulla, an unemployed engineer at a kebob
stand today near the so-called green zone, The price for benzene
is 10 times now what it was on the black market, but there are 10 times
less jobs and who is making 10 times as much money?
Another man drinking
chai nearby immediately starts talking about the resistance. They
think destroying Fallujah will stop the resistance? We already see the
resistance spreading everywhere now, he says, his cigarette waving
about in the air, Even if they bomb every city in Iraq, the resistance
will continue to spread.
While Iraq appears
to be conveniently slipping off the radar of the mainstream media, the
failed occupation continues to grind on towards an end which nobody
here can see.
Everywhere I go
the signs of a society in decline abound. Even at a clinic where I had
to go in order to obtain an HIV test to extend my visa, there is a telling
event.
A doctor walks in
and asks the nurse who is taking my blood what she does with the used
needles. We sterilize them after use then they are incinerated,
she replies. He waves his hand back and forth while telling her, No
more. We are now instructed by the Ministry of Environment there are
no facilities for this, so we are to sterilize them and reuse them.
We finish and walk
outside, passing the Kalashnikov wielding guards (which are in front
of nearly every building in Baghdad), fight our way through some traffic
then try to find some black market petrol. We run out during our futile
seeking-there are even less black marketers as the shortage grows more
severe by the day.
Abut Talat explains
in frustration how his son drove his car too much last night as he pulls
his plastic jug and siphon tube from the trunk. We nervously watch cars
pass while waiting to grab a couple of liters from someone
hoping
for a fuel handout rather than a kidnapping.
Finally amidst this
desperate fuel shortage a generous couple pulls over and give us some
of the precious liquid and were off to get scalped at the black
market.
Driving over a bridge
near the so-called green zone I spot a building with missile holes in
it-a gutted reminder, one of many, of the invasion nearly 2 years ago.
The same propaganda banner for the US-backed al-Iraqia TV network hangs
in the usual place-right where an old propaganda banner for Saddam Hussein
once hung.
It hasnt changed
since I first photographed it last year. The cant work on
that building, says Abu Talat, Because they are afraid the
workers will be resistance spies, because from the top of that building
you can see everything in the green zone.
Apache helicopters
rumble low over the city, their whumping blades leaving
wakes of car alarms through the streets.
Back at my hotel
I indulge my daily ritual of asking the owner if I have hot water yet.
The cold showers are getting old now that the temperature has dropped
and it remains chilly.
This morning I was
awakened by the usual 7am gun battles nearby. They usually coincide
with the morning mortar ritual of blasts hitting the so-called green
zone.
Now as I type this
evening, a huge explosion rattles my walls. A gun battle with heavy
automatic weapons kicks off down the street, and the usual wailing sirens
of ambulances and Iraqi Police begin blaring across the city-streaming
in this direction.
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