The Iraqi Ministry of Interior has issued a statement to the Iraqi people. Very terrifying words and implications. It said:

“Every day the criminal terrorists prove their brutality and meanness and how they insist on hurting our people using the most brutal means and the dirtiest, trying to cause more casualties among the innocent. Another tool for massive killing has appeared lately; it is using trucks of poisonous chlorine gas and detonating them amongst people and in places that are crowded with innocent people. The Ministry of Interior, Department of Civil Defense, has issued the precautions bellow and we hope people would follow them in case of chlorine gas attack:

1- Leave the polluted area and move to a place with fresh air as fast as you can.
2- Put a wet piece of cloth on the nose and breath through it.
3- Switch off all power outlets, if you were home.
4- Don’t gather at the attack scene. Follow the orders of the civil defense members and medical staffs at the scene.
5- Gather in a closed room with few air holes to prevent the gas from going into it.
6- Wash the skin rashes with water.
7- Avoid administering the “kiss of life” to the affected and it is preferred to allow them fresh air.
8- Evacuate the affected to the nearest hospital to be treated quickly.

Department of Civil Defense wishes people good health”

What do you think?

That’s what the people of Iraq have to deal with every moment of their life. Do you think they can enjoy a meal now? They didn’t before, but now that it is clear that their might be a chemical attack and the Iraqi government can do nothing about it. How does an Iraqi inside Iraq think now? I feel so isolated that I can’t even out myself in my brother’s shoes now. He lives in Baghdad. Does he wish to wake up tomorrow at all? I don’t know. He said “yes.” But why would he want to live in such circumstances. What’s in the Iraqis’ minds? I really don’t know.

Here is more

BAGHDAD (AP) — Shiite militants and police enraged by deadly truck bombings went on a shooting rampage against Sunnis in a northwestern Iraqi city Wednesday, killing as many as 70 men execution-style and prompting fears that sectarian violence was spreading outside the capital.
The killings occurred in the mixed Shiite-Sunni city Tal Afar, which had been an insurgent stronghold until an offensive by U.S. and Iraqi troops in September 2005, when militants fled into the countryside without a fight. Last March, President Bush cited the operation as an example that gave him "confidence in our strategy."
The gunmen roamed Sunni neighborhoods in Tal Afar through the night, shooting at residents and homes, according to police and a local Sunni politician. Witnesses said relatives of the Shiite victims in the truck bombings broke into Sunni homes and killed the men inside or dragged them out and shot them in the streets.

Doesn’t this sound like civil war?

Now, I dare The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, CNN, CBS, the AP, REUTERS and other American news outlets to go public and say there is civil war in Iraq. Unless the U.S. administration says it, or allow them to say it, they wouldn’t do it! I don’t know why they want to protect the Americans from knowing the ugly truth from Iraq. some will say “no, but the Americans know.” and I say “No. They don’t. Not all of the know. And if they are going to demand the withdrawal of their troops from Iraq so strongly, they have to know what is really going on there.” I think that is just fair.

Kevin Sites came to my school a few months ago to give a speech. This was the guy who filmed the video of a U.S. Marine shooting an Iraqi insurgent, who was already injured but was still breathing, inside a mosque in Fallujah. He said that NBC, whom he worked for at the time, decided not to show the video of the Marine Killing the insurgent in the mosque. He said that he agreed with the network’s decision because he didn’t want to stir fury in the Middle East because of the footage. He said he believed that if the Iraqis and Arabs saw the footage, they will be angry because the Marine killed an insurgent who wasn’t armed and was already shot and barely breathing. But at the same time, he uploaded the footage online for all the non-American media to use it. Therefore, Jazeera, Arabia and other Arabic channels showed the footage. [you can see the video on the Video section in this blog.]

I thought there was something questionable in what he said to us, the audience. So I asked him “you said you didn’t want to provoke the Arab world, but you already put it available to every Arab tv channel. That doesn’t make sense. What do you mean?” So, he stammered and didn’t know what to say. So, I said “it feels like first it wasn’t your choice because I am in the business and I know that’s not a choice you can make. And also, it feels like the NBC just wanted to protect the Americans from seeing the brutality of the war. And you said you agreed?” By then he realized that he had to make sense now because the audience wanted an answer. So, he said “I know the decision was wrong and that’s why I put the footage on my blog a few days later and apologized to people.”

It is exactly the case now. I and other Iraqis have been saying that there is a civil war going in Iraqi since May 2005 and no one believed me. I hope the above is enough evidence so we can all wake up and try to deal with it.

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

take24stepstofreedom@yahoo.com

I am in the United States on F1 student visa, like all my friends from school, who aren’t Americans. The only difference between them and myself is that they have a “multi entry” visa and I have a “single entry” one. For that reason, I cannot leave the United States until I am done with school. Otherwise, I have to go through the three-month visa application painful process all over again.

This semester, my school offered three travel classes in which students got financial support to travel to certain countries, come times of the student’s choice, to report on stories as part of class requirements. Although I was very interested in one of the classes, I couldn’t apply because I cannot leave the United States. Many of my colleagues are now in Turkey, China, Ghana, Morocco, Vietnam, and other countries. I really wanted to take advantage of this opportunity, but I am not allowed to!

One of the great things about the school I am in is that the faculty spare no efforts to create opportunities for us. I always wondered why everyone in school has the ability to make benefit of all the sources available to us, and why I have very limited possibilities to work with. I wanted to go to Ghana and report from there. Why can’t I do it? Others did.

One colleague left a few days to Amman, Jordan. She is going to write about Iraqi refugees there! Isn’t it a great story…… for me?! But I cannot do it now. I have to wait 18 more months! It doesn’t work this way in journalism.

I am a journalist. And when I applied to a visa, I applied as a journalism student. I cannot find a logical reason why they gave me a one-entry visa. They gave all Iraqi students one-entry visas!

We had to wait for months for the visa to be issued. I am sure they did all the background and security checks they could before they allowed me into the States. Otherwise they are just morons! Because they issued me a visa to enter the States, it means I am clear. Right? Then why the one-entry visa?

My Italian friends have multiple-entry visas. Why? Because they are journalists? I am, too. Because they need it in their classes? I do, too. Because they may feel home sick and need to go back to their country for a while? No comment! Because they will need that in case of family emergency? Hello…. My family is in Baghdad!

I wanted to go back to Baghdad in the summer. as part of school requirements, we have to spend three months working in a news outlet and I thought I would go back to Baghdad and work for my newspaper. What’s better than this! Iraq needs me and I am learning now to go back to Iraq anyway. I might as well apply what I’ve learned so far there. I talked to the newspaper and after long discussions [because they were concerned about the security situation there] I convinced them. But then the visa issue came back again and I was told that it will even be more difficult to apply again!

How do they think when they give a journalist one-entry visa?

When I think about it, I find no word to describe it but “discrimination.” Don’t you think? Why would a German or French get multiple-entry visa and I get what I got? There is no security issue because we all are clear, the evidence is that we all are here now. Pure discrimination and racism.

One of my very close friends here got a phone call a few days ago. “Your father has only a few weeks,” the other end of the call told him. He left to his country the next day.

I was thinking: What if someone called me and said “your father is sick and wants to see you.” What should I do? Don’t I have a family and feelings? Or it is just the French, Germans, Italians, Norwegians and everyone but the Iraqis?

What if someone in my family died? Should I grieve alone like I do everything else?

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki


Take24stepstofreedom@yahoo.com

On March 17, 2003, as Iraq was preparing to enter another war with the United States in two days, I escaped absolute death in a mysterious way. At the time, I decided that life isn’t worth it if I betrayed my principles. It was a risky and stupid game. I played it anyway.

After I graduated from college, I had to serve in the military, the mandatory military service. I could choose between serving 18 months or only three months, if I pay a legal fee, we called it Bedel [it was little more than $1,000 at the time.] So, of course I decided to pay.

I had to join the army in January 2, 2003. And I did.

I bribed everyone I could to not participate in the training. I am not the kind of person who appreciates weapons. I cannot stand them. Maybe I was traumatized when I was a child, I don’t care. My enemy is weapons. So, I couldn’t stand the training. I didn’t want to touch a Kalashnikov [or AK47.] I asked the commander of out platoon to exclude me from weapons training and I would give him some good money in return.

The commander agreed. I never touched a weapon during my time in the military.

But it wasn’t all that pleasant. They moved us around Iraq like five times during the three months. My last post was Qara Hanjeen [or Qariat a-Rabie,] which is a village in the mountains on the between Kirkuk and Erbil. I transferred there on March 1, 2003.

This village was originally Kurdish. But Saddam’s army killed its people and burned and destroyed the houses during the campaign against the Kurds in the late 1980s. It is on the borders of Chamchamal, where the Kurdish militias, the Peshmerga, stationed to defend their territories from a possible “Arab” attack.

The Iraqi army turned the ruins of the village, what is left of the houses, into its barracks. The mountains around the village were landmines fields. The Iraqi army and the peshmerga fought each other and trespassed on each other’s territories. Some told me that the peshmerga snipers killed many Iraqi soldiers while they smoked cigarettes. They traced the light! They were that close to where I was supposed to sleep! In general, a 45-minute-drive area from the borders of Kirkuk to Chamchamal was a military territory and civilians couldn’t pass unless with permission from the Iraqi army.

The houses in Qara Hanjeen were still marked with black smoke on their walls and were riddled with bullets. The walls inside the houses told stories, old inhabitants of these houses scratched their memories and stories to remind the new comers who the owner was. The Iraqi soldiers also scratched their thoughts on the walls. A sad mosaic of the misery of an entire nation.

By that time, we all knew that the Americans are coming no doubt. I was happy. I always told my family that “my brothers [the Americans] are coming to free me and I will go with them. You will miss me.”

I didn’t want to stay in a battle filed. I wasn’t going to defend Saddam’s government and it was time for me to pay the $1,000 to the government to go out of the army because I already “served” the required time which was three months. Therefore, I didn’t stay on the base in Qara Hanjeen. I bribed the commander so I can go there every three or four days to pay more money and take the five-hour drive back to Baghdad the same day.

On March 12, 2003 I finished all the paperwork to pay the Bedel and had to get one signature on the forms from the commander in Qara Hanjeen to be done with the army. I left Baghdad to Qara Hanjeen on Friday, March 14 thinking that I could get the papers stamped and signed by the commander the same day and leave to Baghdad very early on Saturday. The talk about the war was everywhere. We expected a bomb anytime.

On the way to Qara Hanjeen, through Kirkuk, the smell of war was obvious. Iraqi soldiers were everywhere in the streets. They enforced all the main roads and intersections with sandbags and concrete walls to shelter behind in case of an attack. They feared the peshmerga the most because they knew if an attack to happen, the first thing for the peshmerga to do is to attack Kirkuk.

I arrived to Qara Hanjeen. The commander wasn’t on base and I was told that he was coming back next day. I had to spend the night on base. I had no clothes to change and nothing on me but $750 that I thought I would need to bribe people along the process. Other soldiers, most of them were graduates of engineering and education colleges, helped me and gave me a dirty rag to sleep on and protect my body from the freezing concrete floor. We all slept in one house in one 10X16 feet room.

It was an awful night. I couldn’t sleep. I haven’t eaten since last night when I was home and had dinner with my family. I hadn’t had water or went to the bathroom in at least 12 hours. I didn’t want to eat or drink or do anything before I got back home. All what I had was cigarettes, Pine Lights. I put a brick under my head and stared at the ceiling thinking about what I was going through. Others’ snoring was the only reminder that it was bed time.

I couldn’t take the boots off because it was freezing. I even left the beret on my head to keep my skull warm.

The dim light of two kerosene lamps drew scary shadows of heads and bags on the wall. I was trying to amuse myself by looking at the shadows and trying to figure out what they looked like. I thought of my life and future. I had graduated from college a year ago. I studied English literature and language for four years and wanted to continue my M.A. studies in phonetics and phonology. I applied to Baghdad University’s higher studies and my application was denied because “he doesn’t meet the security requirements.” I wasn’t shocked, given that my family was always against the government publicly and my uncle was the face of the Iraqi opposition abroad. Now I am here, maybe I would be killed soon if the war broke out.

It was a long night.

The next day, March 15, at 6:30 a.m. I was standing outside the commander’s office waiting for him to come and sign my papers. He finally came back around noon. I thought that it was still early. “I can still go back to Baghdad today.”

The commander told me “I don’t have the stamp with me. It is with my assistant and he will come later today.”

I waited. I had no other choice. The military law, or maybe the Saddam law, said that if a soldier tried to escape the service in a war time, he should be shot dead. [I was told that they would do it in front of my house!]

The assistant didn’t come back. It was getting dark and I hadn’t had food or water or went to the bathroom in about two days. I hadn’t slept for the same period of time. I went to the commander and asked him what I should do and he promised to stamp and sign the papers very early the next day. So, I went back to the dark and stinky room. The room of horror. Of course I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking about my family, who I left thinking I was going to see them the next day. “What are they thinking now?” I asked myself. “What is my mother doing, I bet she is crying. With all the news about the war, I bet she is going crazy now and I have been out of my house in a battle field for two days now and they have no idea where I am or what I am doing.”

Next day, March 16, I was standing before the commander’s office very early in the morning. I was told that he and his assistant left to the headquarters in Kirkuk for a “meeting with the leadership” and will be back in the afternoon. I thought “this is good. At least I know that his assistant is here and they will sign my papers.”

I waited until it was 8 p.m. and dark. I lost hope. With nothing but cigarettes for three days, I was desperate. My family didn’t know what was going on with me. They don’t know if I am alive or not. They don’t know how or who to ask about me. They were alone, and I was desperate.

Finally, they came back shortly after 9 p.m. I went to the commander’s office and asked him to sign my papers.

“We have new orders,” he said. “Bedel is not accepted anymore because it is war. The leadership announced emergency status. You have to stay here until the end of the war.” I told him that I would give him the $750 I had, which was a lot at that time, if he signed my papers. He laughed loud.

“We will all be killed,” he said, “what should I do with your money?” And dismissed me.

I was devastated. I am going to die here. I don’t know how to use a weapon to defend myself. Even if I did, defend myself against whom? My brothers [that what I called the U.S. soldiers] or against the Kurds [I am half Kurdish]? I cannot do that.

I decided to end this stupid play and do it my way.

On March 17, 2003 I escaped from the army. Before dawn I sneaked out of the room and then out of the barracks and walked with no sense of direction in the mountains. The only fear I had was landmines. But then I thought “I cannot fight in this war. I’ve been waiting for this war to happen.” So, to get killed in a landmine while escaping a dictatorship is better that getting killed fighting for Saddam Hussein.

A few minutes later I found a military vehicle approaching. I stopped it and convinced the driver that my commander sent me back home because I paid the Bedel. I had the papers, they just weren’t signed and he couldn’t tell.

The driver took me to the main bus station in Kirkuk, where I found a taxi willing to take me to Baghdad.

The driver was worried to take someone in a military uniform in his car. But I told him that I was legal and showed him the papers. He told me stories about soldiers who were shot dead in front of their houses during the Iranian-Iraqi war just because they escaped the battlefiled. I was shaking, but couldn’t let him see that.

Along the way to Baghdad, there were many military checkpoints, which were installed to arrest the escaping soldiers. I don’t know why they didn’t suspect me, although I was in the uniform. They stopped us several times and asked for papers and documents. I don’t know why they didn’t notice that the papers weren’t signed. The driver took care of the talking. I was just listening. I was terrified all the way. You can imagine: it was either I go back home, or get shot in the head for escaping a battle filed.

I finally saw my house. I arrived home. Such a wonderful feeling. I don’t want anything now but a hot bath and a meal and my bed. Nothing fancy. I just want my life back.

Just two days before the war, I entered the house. No one expected me. My parents, brothers, my uncle and his wife and my cousins gathered in my home. I could tell what they were doing in the last three days from the black circles around their red and exhausted eyes.

They thought I was gone!

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

The Fadhila Islamic Party announced today its withdrawal from the Shiite alliance [officially dubbed The United Iraqi Alliance] in the Iraqi government. The party is one of the powerful Shiite parties that hold 15 seats of the 130 the Shiites have in the parliament. They got the seats after they joined the Shiite alliance and ran as one bloc in the parliamentary elections in December 2005.

Déjà vu! We’ve heard things like this before. A few months ago, the Sadr group, which holds 30 seats in the Shiite alliance, withdrew from the government and the cabinet. But they joined back after they achieved what they wanted, which I think was to guarantee protection of their Mehdi army leaders and more space in the streets to do their job of killing Iraqis. Before that, Iyad Allawi’s group, the Iraqi National List, threatened to withdraw their 25 seats from the 275-seat parliament unless the government worked on achieving “national unity and reconciliation” or something like that. And of course, the Sunnis cannot watch everyone threatening to leave without joining. The Sunnis walked out of a parliament session several times and threatened to suspend their participation in the political process. Their Iraqi Accordance Front holds 44 seats in the parliament. A few days before the elections, the Iraqi Islamic Party, which is one of the key members of the Sunni Iraqi Accordance Front, announced its withdrawal from the elections because they felt that the Shiites were playing dirty game in the election campaigns. It was a tricky way to gain more support from the Sunnis because the elections law in Iraq says that a group cannot withdraw its candidates from the elections after a certain deadline, which the Islamic party waited for to pass and then withdrew.

Politics! I love it because it is a dirty and stinky game!

When the Fadhila party joined the Shiite alliance “we thought it was the first step to unite one of the factions of the Iraqi fabric which would lead to unite all the Iraqis,” a statement from the party said. “What happened in the [political] arena was that every bloc was concerned only with its faction.”

Woow. I have to ask: were you asleep? That was a long nap!

Where were you when you joined the alliance. I mean it was obvious that each bloc cared about not even their faction, but their own interests. Your campaign called for compensations for only the Shiites who were killed by Saddam Hussein’s government for God’s sake. How is that uniting Iraqis? Your campaign used Sistani’s pictures, how is that uniting “all” Iraqis? And where were you since you got your 15 seats and received all the salaries and “commissions” from the oil contracts in Basra, which your militias control?

There is talk that Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite, is secretly organizing a group that eventually takes over and be the new Iraqi government. I couldn’t find any evidence on that. I called my sources in Iraq and elsewhere and they said that they heard this rumor, but have no evidences. So, I couldn’t say if it is a fact or not.

It is amazing that Fadhila party withdrew from the alliance after they used it name and power to get the 15 seats. And now, with all the facts that the government has failed and continues to fail. The Iraqis didn’t vote for Fadhila party, they voted for an alliance that Fadhila is part of it.

By the way, in January 2006, the Islamic Dawa Party, a main party in the Shiite alliance, threatened to withdraw its 15 seats from the sectarian bloc if the alliance didn’t support the party’s request to nominate a Prime Minister who is a member of Dawa. When most of the blocs in the parliament rejected, the party threatened to screw everything. With the Sadr group’s and Fadhila’s threats to withdraw, too much for The “United” Iraqi Alliance!

“We think the first step to rescue Iraq should be to dismantle those [ethnic and sectarian] blocs and not to allow organizing the bloc on the bases of ethnicity or sectarianism,” Fadhila party said in its statement.

Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister, hearing all these rumors and facing all the pressure from the United States, keeps promising a reshuffle of his cabinet. I’ve been hearing about this promise for months now. But it doesn’t happen. Even if it happens, the change will be the faces only buut the ideologies will always be the same. I don’t understand why people don’t realize that if a minister from the Sadr group is dismissed and another one, also from Sadr group, comes in, that means nothing has changed. The Iraqi government’s problem is not the individuals only, but rather the political groups themselves. I’ve mentioned this in an entry when they announced Maliki as a prime minister and I said that people shouldn’t be optimistic that we got rid of Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the leader of Dawa party, and replaced him with the number one in the party!

I believe it is very difficult to change anything now. Even if Allawi succeeds to attract the best blocs and politicians in the country, it will not happen. The Shiites will not let it happen, even if he got the Kurds on his side.

The only chance for the Iraqi political arena to change is to wait for the next parliamentary elections in 2009. I strongly believe that this is our last chance to prove that we are a human and humane nation!

I believe that the Iraqis know by now what a turbaned and poisonous government can do, or cannot do. The Iraqis tasted their bitter medicine, which they thought might cure years of oppression. They have to change in the next elections. After failing and losing thousands of lives in the succession of two turbaned governments, they realized that Ali al-Sistani, Harith al-Dhari and other poisonous snakes are not the way to go.

I really believe that my people will go for seculars in the next elections. If they don’t, then they deserve what will happen, or should I say: what will continue to happen! And by then, there is no point of having the U.S. troops there because they will be risking their lives for nothing!

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

The Associated Press reported today that “Getting full-time electric power turned on in Baghdad….. won't be accomplished until 2013,” quoting U.S. officials.

I couldn’t link to the story at the time of writing this entry, because I got it from a wire service that requires subscription. So, I think you can wait until it is in newspapers and read it.

The news didn’t surprise me, but it did strike me that they come out and say this now. In a time when all the efforts are said to focus on quelling violence in Iraq, especially in Baghdad, and bringing Iraqis the hope back of a better future, I don’t think this news is the right thing to say now.

The story talked about how much power the Baghdadis get now. “In January, it was 4.4 hours; in February, it was 5.9,” the story said. That isn’t true! I talk to my family every morning and they’ve been telling me that my neighborhood, which is a hardcore Sunni neighborhood, has been getting ONE hour of electricity per day and for months now!

The U.S. has spent $4.2 billion on the power issue in Iraq so far, the AP said. Where did the money go?

I just cannot convince my stubborn mind that the U.S. is that stupid that no one is figuring out where the money is going. Sometimes I think that they “trust” the Iraqi officials that much that they hand them all these billions and say “go ahead and spend it on electricity projects. No, you don’t have to report to us.” But then I remember: it doesn’t work this way.

I know it is corruption, but I don’t know for sure what the U.S. is doing to prevent that.

If it were for me, I wouldn’t deal with the same people for four years if I see my money disappears and don’t see any progress. Therefore, I ask myself “if I think this way, is it possible that the U.S. administration has no one to think like me!”

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki