Progress in Iraq

Iraq Dispatches

Dahr Jamail reports:

May 18

I neither read nor listen to corporate media drivel concerning Iraq...but today I wonder what they could possibly be saying to justify the failed occupation of Iraq on this horrible day. I also wonder how people in America have yet to take the appropriate action necessary in order to force their government to impeach Bush and bring him and his regime to justice for the countless war crimes they have committed in Iraq.

Yesterday Hassan Nuaimi, high ranking member of the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) was found dead in Baghdad. One of his arms was broken and a hole was drilled into the side of his head.

[...]

In response to the murdering of Nuaimi, two Shia clerics were gunned down in Baghdad yesterday.

Harith al-Dhari, head of the AMS, blamed the Shia Badr Brigades for the recent spate of killings of Sunni clerics in the country.

Dhari, making a statement that could be interpreted as an announcement of civil war, said Sunnis would not keep silent over the killings.

"We are heading towards a catastrophe, only God knows when it will end, this is a warning from us," he said angrily.

[...]

There has been a low-grade civil war going on for quite some time-but now the veil has been ripped off by the statements made by Dhari.

[...]

Thus, any argument that the US military should remain in Iraq to prevent a civil war can be flushed. Besides, anyone arguing that the US military was there to protect the Iraqi people is either blind, in denial, or knows absolutely nothing about the reality on the ground in occupied Iraq.

[...]

I conducted an informal interview two days ago with a UN official here in Amman...thus I'll leave his name out of this...for now. He told me that 95% of the reconstruction funds for rebuilding Iraq have been spent outside of Iraq.

So the argument of staying in Iraq to help rebuild the country-that too could have been flushed long ago.

[...]

[T]he Bush Administration is guilty under international law for the catastrophe Iraq has become. Under international law it is the primary responsibility of the occupier to safeguard the citizens of the country they occupy.

June 7

Suicide bombers unleashed another day of hell across Iraq today, killing at least 18 and wounding over 67.

Four of them struck Iraqi Security forces, along with US military convoys around Baghdad. Despite the huge US-backed Iraqi security operation throughout the capital city, attacks there continue unabated.

The small city of Rawa near Al-Qa’im was bombed again by the US military Sunday night. The military admitted to the bombing, but claimed that there were no civilian casualties. Today on Al-Jazeera the satellite channel flashed footage of flattened civilian homes, as well as people in the city claiming that seven civilians were killed in the bombings.

[...]

It continues to be clear that the plans of the Bush Administration in Iraq either do not include the protection of Iraqis, they don’t care, or both.

I received an email from someone today along these lines which I found interesting:

“I operated out of Camp Anaconda, near Balad. What almost everyone, both in uniform and those as contractors, agreed on (was) the objective of the Bush Administration’s long term (plan) is focused primarily on oil. Hearts and minds are secondary, far behind the issue of petroleum products, as the US continues to compete for resources around the world. I hope more media conversation is forthcoming on this issue.”

Also along these lines, an Iraqi friend of mine who is a doctor in Baghdad told me that when he was in Ramadi yesterday, US soldiers attacked the Anbar Medical School while students were taking their exams. As he said, “They (US soldiers) smashed the front gates of the school in a barbaric way using Humvees…and terrorized the female students while arresting two students while they were working on their exams. They then lay siege to the homes of the dean of the university, along with homes of lecturers, even though their families were inside.”

May 22

It’s coming apart at the seams now in Iraq. We saw on the news today that members of the Mehdi Army in the south, the militia of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, exchanged gunfire with members of the ING (Iraqi National Guard) who in the south are primarily, if not entirely composed of members of the Badr Army, also a Shia group. So now we have Shia fighting Shia.

[...]

Meanwhile in Baghdad, things are just as bad. [...] Abu Talat was talking via IM with his wife as she nearly fainted because bombs and gunfire were so near their home.

“What can I do,” Abu Talat asked me from a nearby computer at an internet café, “My family is in great danger and what can I do to help them?”

I stared at him dumbly…there was no response.

I helped find phone numbers of friends and other family members of his around Baghdad to try to go check on his family. He called them five times, constantly monitoring their situation while he was crying. Between calls he set the phone down to hold his head in his hands.

[...]

This is one family in a city of 5.5 million Iraqis, struggling to survive the brutal, chaotic, lawlessness caused by the Anglo-American occupation that has destroyed their country.

May 30

At least 740 Iraqis have been killed since the new “government” took power in late April, and with the ongoing operations sparking more attacks each day, it doesn’t look like there is an end in sight. Keep in mind, the vast majority of the Iraqi security forces are either Shia or Kurdish battling against a primarily Sunni resistance (for now). It can easily be argued that we are witnessing a US-backed Iraqi government who is deliberating using its power to wage a civil war.

On that note, today Major General Ahmed al-Barazanchi, a Kurdish man who was the director of internal affairs of Kirkuk province died this morning after being shot yesterday.

My sources in Baghdad also said there have been fierce clashes today in the al-Amiriya district of Baghdad between resistance fighters and Iraqi and US soldiers. “Open gun battles in the streets,” as one friend told me, “And as soon as the Iraqi and US soldiers leave the area, the resistance takes it back over.”

Keep in mind that all of this is against the backdrop of well over 50% unemployment, horrendous traffic jams, and an infrastructure in shambles that continues to degrade with next to no reconstruction occurring in Baghdad.

[A friend wrote:] “Two years of occupation…for God sake where is the rebuilding, where the hell are these billions donated to Iraq? Even not 1% improvement in services and electricity! They say again and again the terrorists are to blame and I would accept this, but why they do not protect these facilities? Do the American camps have cuts of electricity? No, no, and nobody will allow this to happen...but poor Iraqis, nobody would be sorry for them if they burn with the hell of summer, small kids and old men they get dehydrated because no electricity, no cold water, etc. Have you heard about the tea that is mixed with iron particles? It is real in our life. People have to make sure their tea is not mixed with iron by use of magnets.”

He concluded his email with, “Things are getting worse day by day. Iraq has become a country not for its people, every day thoughts jump into the mind that sooner or later we have to leave this country, searching for another. And there is a saying, “your home is where you sleep safe,” but this is not true in Iraq anymore.”

[...]

Yesterday the Iraqi government announced that it may decrease subsidies for fuel and electricity, despite a severe shortage of both in the country, according to the electricity minister who warned Iraqis to prepare for more blackouts this summer.

Ongoing fuel, electricity and drinking water shortages persist, and only 37% of Iraqis have a working sewage system.

Tomgram: Dahr Jamail, an independent reporter from Alaska, covered our occupation of Iraq for much of 2004 and the beginning of 2005 before coming home early this year. As a "unilateral," he was a distinctly atypical figure in Baghdad. Unlike reporters for major papers, wire services, and the TV news, he lacked the guards, vehicles, elaborate home base, tech support, fixers, and all the other appurtenances of an American journalist in the ever more dangerous Iraqi capital, a city now so filled with violence and explosions that the young blogger Riverbend recently wrote: "It is almost as if Baghdad has turned into a giant graveyard." Unlike most American reporters, however, Jamail (gambling his life) refused to let himself be trapped in his hotel and so his reporting was of the (rare) outside-the-Green-Zone variety. With his Iraqi translator and friend, he regularly interviewed ordinary Iraqis rather than officials of various sorts.

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