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?" 29 September 2004 * Farnaz Fassihi, a Wall Street Journal reporter sent this report as an e-mail to friends -
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