WikiLeaks Iraq War Logs Are Out. Nothing New! Now What?

We all knew it. We all experienced it. We all weren’t surprised by it. And by ‘We’ I mean Iraqis who went through the successive years of mayhem since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003. 

The information in the 391,832 U.S. military documents that were released yesterday by the Whistle-blower website WikiLeaks did not come as a surprise to me. You shouldn’t be surprised either. Iraqis have been talking about this over and over for years on blogs, newspapers, TV and radio stations and through human rights organizations.

The Iraqi people have been frequently complaining since ever about torture conducted by the Iraqi police. They have said it nonstop that the foreign security contractors have been killing civilians haphazardly, and sometimes for no reason. Shiite militias controlled the streets of many cities in Iraq and appeared to be well trained by Iran to kill and torture.

Many thought we were exaggerating or saying things that are not supported by facts, but now our words are finally backed up by evidence! I’m happy these WikiLeaks documents finally came out. However the questions remains: Now What?!

The U.S. government apparently knew all about the killings of innocent Iraqis, Iran’s training of Shiite militias and Iraqi security forces’ abuse and rape of teenagers in prisons. Nevertheless, they decided not to take actions, not to intervene!

So what will the United States do in response to the that? Apologize to Iraqis? I don’t think so. Even if they do, will this bring back the lives of the thousands of civilians killed in the war? It won’t. Will it make Iraq safer? It won’t either. Will it change the current miserable political situation there? Not at all.

As an Iraqi, I don’t need an apology. I need justice. I need to see those who committed crimes against my fellow Iraqis get what they deserve. As for the Iraqi torturers, I don’t see them being brought to justice anytime soon, simply because they are under the same sectarian government that let this happen under their watch. We need a new government. We need new people to run the country and make this happen. Iraqis made their choice in last March elections, but the sectarian powers are refusing to give it to the moderates who were elected. Until this happens, I don’t think justice will ever be achieved in Iraq.

Talk to an Iraqi

Haider Hamza is an Iraqi who goes around the US, with a small wooden booth titled “Talk to an Iraqi”, and he just sits there and lets people come and talk to him.

Fierce Competetion to Shape Iraq’s Future

On Saturday, Iraqi people are going to the polling centers to cast their ballots in the country’s provincial elections. I’ve been following the elections news and thought I should share some information I have gathered in that regard.

For those interested in understanding what the ABCs of the elections are, read this MSNBC Q&A report.

As you may all know, violence in Iraq has decreased due to several factors, including the segregation of the cities and the neighborhoods within and the joint Iraqi-American military operations that helped fight the insurgents and militias who almost took over the country. But above all those factors was the fact that the Iraqi people themselves have finally realized that there was no need to fight each other anymore. This, of course, excludes the politicians. And this led to a relative reconciliation that has finally penetrated into the warring Iraqi society.

Saturday’s provincial elections are critical. I believe they will be a new kind of test where Iraqis are going to see if those they are voting for will take the country forward and not backwards. It is a test for Iraqis themselves as well. The results will reveal whether the people have learned their lessons of the past elections. Of course, it is hard to assume they did as democracy is still new and it’ll take them decades to understand how it should work.

In this post, I’ll try to post some of the main concerns and most important issues that are related to the elections:

– Shiites, Maliki and the south

In most of the provinces across the country, the direction nowadays is not religious. People no longer care about the fact that the candidate is the son of the prophet, his grandson, or even the prophet himself. All they need is clean water, electricity, jobs and security. This is a milestone in the road of understanding that religion should be separated from the state. In this regard, Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki, an Islamist and a leader of the Dawa Islamic Party and who runs The State of Law Coalition slate, is not using his party’s religious mottos. In an interview with the Washington Post, a campaign manager for the Shiite coalition said, “Maliki is Islamic as a person, but as a statesman? No, he’s secular.” He added that there are other priorities he and his candidates need to consider.

Ghassan Al-Attiyah, a secular political analyst has noted this change as well. Yet, he told the Post that the important question is if Maliki is sincere in “wearing the mantle of reform instead of Islam.”

In a recent poll conducted by the widely-read independent Azzaman newspaper and Al-Sharqiyah satellite TV, Maliki and his State of Law Coalition are on the top of the charts. According to the Washington Post and the New York Times, Maliki’s popularity these days has risen due to his strong statements regarding the centralization of the Iraqi government, which I think is a tactic he’s using to win the votes because he knows some Iraqis, except the Kurds, do not want the country to be divided into federal regions. This tactic is scaring his Kurdish and other Shiite rivals, of course. Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, the cancer-ill leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, has been calling uninterruptedly for separating southern Iraq from the rest of the country in a federal region that will look hugely like Iran and be run by Mullahs and Ayatollahs. The Kurds on the other hand are not worried about that. They already have their federal region, ruled by them democratically. However, their concern is how much power should the central government own. They have not yet gotten rid of the trauma Saddam had caused in brutalizing them and their rights. The outspoken Kurdish member of the Iraqi parliament told the New York Times that “people think [Maliki] has overreached.” It has even reached the extent that Waleed Salih Sherka told the Post that “[Iraqis] got rid of the dictator and nightmare Saddam Hussein only to get this new dictator wearing the uniform of democracy.” Wow, the competition is fierce. Several Iraqi and American newspapers have also mentioned that there have been some heated discussions recently between the Masoud Barzani and Maliki.

In addition to Maliki’s coalition, other candidates from other political parties are competing to win some seats. Those include the communists, the secularists, members of the Fadhila party, the nationalists, and some independent candidates who gain their support from the tribes in the provinces.

– Anbar, once restive now tries to be democratic

Anbar province was one of the most violent part in the country. Who of us doesn’t know the Fallujah battle? Today, the Sunnis in Anbar are focusing on democracy rather than violence. The Post’s Anthony Shadid reported from Ramadi, the provinces’ capital, that competition is fierce between the tribes-backed candidates and the political parties. Anbaris may find it hard to have technocrats or seculars to rule the province. They are left with the tribes because these tribes revolted against Al-Qaeda and restored the power from the terror organization. The tribes insist that The political parties like the Iraqi Islamic Party are not beneficial for the province. Shadid quote one of the candidates calling the IIP “liars” and “cowards.” They call Harith al-Dhari, head of the Muslim Scholars Association and a strong supporter of al-Qaeda in Iraq, “a barking dog” since all he does is complaining from his comfort zone in Jordan.

In any case, the Post reported that of the 29 candidates in Anbar, 15 are tribal figures.

Believe it or not, a group of secular liberals are also running in this election. The Post reports that “Shiites and Kurds sit on their board. So do a Christian and a Jew, one of the handful left in the country.” The paper said they advocate human rights and transparency, and end of corruption and the rehabilitation of Iraq. However, Shadid observed that “no one seems to be listening [to them]. “No one really can,” writes Shadid.

Against the tribes’ candidates run the Iraqi Islamic Party which created a coalition with some tribes. Called “Coalition of the Educated and Tribes for Development,” the coalition includes four Sunni political blocks, according to the Opinion Web site, Niqash. It also mentioned that violent incidents might occur between the competitive factions. One of the candidates Shadid interviewed was Hamid Al-Hayes who threatened to “kill all of their candidates” if theirs are attacked.

– Nineveh and the Kurd-Arab divide

It’s been continuously reported that the Kurds in the north are trying to include some of the non-Kurdish lands to their region. Their efforts include attempting to control parts of Nineveh province which is the home of Mosul, Iraq’s largest second city after Baghdad.

Since the election campaigns started, violence increased in the restive province. Niqash reported that several members of the competing political factions have been killed since the campaigns started. Observers believe these assassinations aim to destabilize the area.

In the northern province there are basically two slates, one include Arabs and the other include the Kurds. The Washington Post observed that Arabs in the province are looking forward to win in order to “appoint a governor and use their political power to roll back the Kurdish expansion.”

***

In the midst of this race of who will run the provinces, election posters have been stuck on almost every building and electricity post. Since corruption is a disease Iraq is still suffering from, some candidates used several methods to make people vote for them. Azzaman reported that Iraqis have been complaining about pressure and threats carried out by some parties to force them vote for their candidates. The threats varied, including assassinations and kidnappings. The paper added that they have even tried to bribe people to vote for their candidates.

***

I wish I had the time to write more about everything related to the elections. However, I suggest you read the articles I have linked to in this post for a better understanding of how this election is shaped.

blog.bassamsebti@gmail.com

Seeing Our Past in ‘Betrayed’

It was the same scene playing in my mind as it was on the stage. A young man called Adnan standing between mutilated dead bodies at the Baghdad morgue, looking for his friend’s body. As I was watching, I recalled how I stood in the real morgue back in 2006. The smell of the decaying bodies and the horror of being identified by the militias who were controlling the morgue flashed back into my eyes. I couldn’t but feel the warm tears pouring, watering my cheeks. The whole scene reminded me of the story I covered for the Washington Post when Shiite militiamen killed hundreds of innocents after the Samarra shrine bombing in 2006, an incident that triggered the civil war between the Sunnis and Shiites in the war-torn country.

The horrific scene was performed in Betrayed, a play by the The New Yorker writer George Packer, author of the acclaimed The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq. Betrayed, which was screened at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater, is about the plight of the Iraqis who worked for the Americans who were either killed or threatened to be killed by the extremists who considered them traitors, spying for the occupiers and who were betrayed by their American employers who did not help them survive or flee the country for protection. The idea of the play started as an article in The New Yorker by Mr. Paker who adopted the play’s plot and characters from real stories and information he gathered as he reported in the article.
The play was great. The New York Times put it in the best words:

“But the clarity of the writing, the urgency of the story being told and the fine performances give the play a sharp dramatic impact and a plain-spoken beauty. Painful human experience is presented here as just that. Nothing else is necessary to awaken sympathy, despair and awareness of a grave moral failure on the part of the American government.”

Last night was great not only because I watched the play, but also because I had the chance to meet George Paker whom I consider my idol, along with Anthony Shadid. I never want anything in my career life just to achieve at least half of what they achieved. Mr. Paker was a very nice person. We talked about the article, the play and of course his book The Assassins Gate.

Before the play started, my Iraqi friends and I had the chance to speak with celebrity and American actress Sarah Jesscia Parker who was hosting the play along with Matt Dillon, and Refugees International. We had the chance to speak with Sarah Jessica about how we lived and worked for American organizations, be it for the government or for the U.S. newspapers. My friend, B, whom the play was partly based on her story as a young woman working in the Green Zone for the Americans, explained to the superstar the reality of the daily risk she put herself in to do her job. Parker was all ears. It was the second time she attended the play. She said she was ready this time. She brought her tissues.

blog.bassamsebti@gmail.com

The World Through the Eyes of a Solo Reporter

I usually write my reviews about books after I finish reading them, but this time I wanted to share my opinion with you before finishing it.

This time the book is about conflict all over the world: In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars by solo journalist, Kevin Sites. Which one of us doesn’t remember the U.S. soldier’s image shooting an unarmed insurgent in a mosque in Fallujah during the 2004 Fallujah battle? It was Kevin Sites who shot that controversial footage.

I bought the book from Borders bookstore a few days ago after leafing through its pages. I have heard a lot about Sites, but never had the chance to read his reports. Along with the book, came the DVD documentary “A World of Conflict,” a must-see film that I watched last night.

We all know that our world is turning upside down with violence somewhere and economy collapse somewhere else. It is indeed a world of conflict which sometimes drives me to the question of whether the science-fiction movies we see about the destruction of earth would become true some day.

Watching the world’s conflicts, Sites came up with an idea, a one that led to an important project: covering twenty wars in one year.

Sites’ first chapter of the book and the introductory part of the documentary was about the Fallujah mosque shooting and his time in Iraq. He describes how he was labeled as a traitor by those who don’t accept facts and who do not want to admit that war is ugly and that crimes happen from both fighting parties. The insurgent who was shot might deserve what had happened to him, but the way he was killed was, of course, against the ethics of fighting in war zones. It’s sad to see that those who sent Sites threatening letters and text messages do not understand that he was just doing his job and had not expressed in no way ever his own, personal opinion regarding what happened. He let the world judge and it did.

I see Sites as a good example of balanced, sincere and extremely honest journalism. His words and the video footages he took in the countries he covered had an imprint of humanity. Throughout his travels as a solo journalist in conflict zones, the sense of humanity in his dispatches and reports was strongly evident, having it covered away from politics. There was a scream of horror that he wanted to let the rest of the world hear.

There were stories from Afghanistan, Nepal, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Congo, and other places in the world. Sites was successful in detailing in a summarized way what the cause of violence was and how it took its toll on the human beings there. The things that blew me up the most were the stories from the Congo, Lebanon and Afghanistan. In the documentary he interviews a woman called Marie (not her name, as he mentions in the book). She was raped several times in front of her husband by militiamen who killed her children before her eyes and then mutilated her husband’s body after killing him. The worst part was asking her to chew his cut flesh. “They use rape as a weapon of war,” she told Sites. “They have guns, but this is worse than the guns.” The entire interview in the documentary brought tears to my eyes.

His coverage of the Israel-Lebanon war in the summer of 2006 was noteworthy. He was there when Israel shelled entire buildings with civilians in them. The image of the woman weeping after their loved ones died and the image of the children covered with blood is unforgettable.

Reading the book now after watching the documentary makes me picture all those who were interviewed. Reading the words and comparing them to the people’s faces makes my heart ache. So much violence out there, so many wars, and so much pain and sorrow in the hearts and minds of people. Like Sites, I believe this violence aims to kill civilization and most importantly humanity. The worst part of all, in my opinion, is that there are people out there benefiting from all of this, encouraging more and more violence and causing the deaths and the suffering of millions of people across our cursed planet.

blog.bassamsebti@gmail.com

A Country inside a Country!

“By the order of the Sadr office, no one is allowed to use this road,” a policeman told me while I was going to cover the Friday prayer in Sadr City. I was shocked and said to myself, “What is going on?!”

A policeman, who is supposed to receive orders from the Iraqi government, receives an order from a religious Shiite office!

The moment you enter Sadr city, you feel that you are out of Baghdad and you are in another country, a Shiite one which has nothing to do with the government. Police are only welcomed to control the boundaries cooperated by the Mahdi army

Once known as Al Thawra, then as Saddam City, Sadr City is named for the Imam Mohammed Sadr, an Iraqi Shiite religious leader killed by Saddam Hussein in 1999.
The city’s 2.5 million Shiites are dominated by the radical Shiite cleric, Muqtada Sadr whose face on the posters stuck everywhere in the city. The city is subdivided into six sections and it is one of the poorest in Baghdad. Unemployment is widely spread. Homes are in disrepair. It is also a haven for criminals released from Iraqi prisons by Saddam shortly before the U.S.-led invasion. Parts of some streets in the city are flooded with sewage from neglected pipes. Residents of Sadr City say that the Baghdad Municipality does not pick up their trash. So they throw their trash on the medians of the streets.

Wearing black shirts and trousers, Mahdi Army militiamen who act as the police force within the community are deployed everywhere in the city.
To attend the Friday prayer, the visitor, although welcomed, has to be subjected to physical search by these militiamen in every 50 meters.

The residents and the militiamen accuse the government for its “failure or weakness” in controlling the country, so they decided to “control” themselves by themselves as “the Shiites are the main target in Iraq now instead of the occupation.”

In early April 2004, the Mahdi Army attempted to interfere with security in Baghdad. The militia attempted to occupy and gain control of police stations and government buildings. During this attack, the militia engaged coalition forces and Iraqi Security Forces with small arms fire and RPGs. Coalition forces and Iraqi security forces prevented this effort and reestablished security in Baghdad.

From my frequent visits to Sadr City, I concluded that it is now considered one of the safest areas in Baghdad in which its visitors, Arabs or westerners, may believe they are in another country controlled by its people!