What shocked me the most in this trip was how the city looked like Baghdad. New Orleans looked like Baghdad after the war in 1991; I swear I kid you not. The devastation, empty houses, the people returning to their life in the city, the “rituals” people practice before they completely come back, the bumps in the streets and the smell of destruction [it has a distinctive smell people. Yes it does.]

I arrived to New Orleans Thursday. On the way to the hotel, I saw the same thing I saw on tv two years ago, destroyed buildings. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Two years later and the scene is the same? Where are we? A government that spent hundreds of billions of dollars on wars overseas is not capable of dealing with a crisis on its own soil! A crisis that all what it needed was money!

Part of what I was supposed to do there is to walk around, talk to people and take picture of houses. My friends [not the ones who I was with there] were worried: a middle eastern in the middle of a southern state! Walking around in empty blocks, where crime rate is still high, ALONE taking pictures of houses?! To them, that sounded scary. At least, they thought, people won’t be friendly or helpful.

I always tell people here, who ask me to be careful because people may not be friendly, “if I am nice to people, there is no reason why they don’t treat me nicely. You get what you give.” This doesn’t seem to convince them, but it works for me.

I got worried, to tell the truth. But it never made me question my trip or hesitate. In fact, when I get worried, I work better.

The first day of reporting was in a shipping center, where we had to approach people and ask them if they lived in the neighborhood we focused on, take their exact address and names. [to me, that sounds weird!]

“Hi, I am a journalist from …… and we are working on a project ….” That was the way I introduced myself to people. I had 15 seconds to convince people, with my accent and “handsome” middle eastern looks, that all I wanted was to help them. The first interview was good. The second was better, the third was even better. All the day was great. People were super nice. They were more helpful than I needed that I had to keep talking to them and lose time because they wouldn’t let go. They kept telling me stories, not necessarily related to the hurricane or our issue of concern, but any stories. I loved that.

What was even better is that people didn’t care where I am from, like everywhere else. All what they cared about is what I was doing and when it will be published.

One woman, after I interviewed her in the parking lot of a huge store, and as she was getting into her car, turned around and asked me “where are you from?” I was like “Uh Oh. Here it comes. That’s what they warned me of and there will be a scene in five seconds.”

“I am from Baghdad. Iraq,” I said.
“Oh, OK. Have a good day sweetheart and good luck with your project,” she replied. “Thanks and you have a good day too,” I said feeling guilty for thinking in my mind, even if for a second, that she was going to be rude. Damn you my American friends, I thought, you should know your people!

Amazing people. Wonderful hospitality. As one of my friends said “there is a reason why it’s called southern hospitality.”

I started to wander in the streets, taking pictures and taking to the very few people, who are either already back or still rebuilding their houses. A very sad experience I had. Some would say “but you are from Iraq, you have even more sad stories.” Yes, that’s right. But that doesn’t mean this is not sad!

Empty houses with graffiti on the facades recording what was found in the house after the hurricane. Several graffiti put the number of people found dead in the house. One said five.

In the mid 80s, there was a big battle between the Iranian and the Iraqi armies in a city called Faw. It is the Iraqi port on the Persian Gulf. The city was flattened and occupied by the Iranian army. A two years later, Saddam Hussein vowed to take it back and he did. Within a few months, the city’s original residents were compensated and rebuilt their city. That was under the rule of a dictatorship.

In 1991, Iraq was destroyed, mainly Baghdad and other big cities like Mosul, Basra. The Americans made sure that the average Iraqis didn’t get water, electricity, or food. And they made sure to also bomb the communication buildings so the average Iraqis didn’t have a way to know about each other and what was going on. Within three months after the end of the war, most of the government building and services, including potable water, sewer system, paving bombed streets, phones and electricity. That was under the rule of Saddam Hussein, whom Bush’s administration accused of depriving his people from their share of oil revenues!

What about people in New Orleans. They don’t have a dictator to rebuild their city. They have a democracy that is fighting its way to spend 100 billion more dollars on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Who will help the people of New Orleans?

The rich in the city had their houses already rebuilt. Beautiful houses the rich have got. And it has nothing to do with race. People from all kinds were still without houses and are still living in trailers, and all kinds of rich people are living in their ivory towers too.

What struck me is that New Orleans people overwhelmingly voted for Bush in 2004! And don’t know why they did that. What were they thinking! As I blamed Iraqis fro what is happening in Iraq, I now blame people of New Orleans for what is not happening now. I blame them for not having adequate funds to rebuild their city and for lack of federal support for the poor, because hey reelected Bush when they clearly saw how his administration managed the country.

And people are still hopeful in New Orleans. It is also one other thing that made me compare Iraq to this city. With all what happened to Iraqis before and now, you still see the majority of Iraqis smile, drink tea over happy conversations and jokes and they are still hopeful and why you ask them why, they say “because it cannot be worse than this.” The people in New Orleans are the same. With all what they’ve been through, they are still hospitable, respectful, have sense of humor and hopeful that the misery they are in is not going to last for ever. And when I asked why they believed that, “I don’t know. Just because,” the reply was!

I went to a gathering of people in which they spoke to a the young director of Public Works. The residents complained about the bumps in the streets in front of their houses. “The street is non existent,” a woman told me. Most of the streets were damaged by construction trucks. One woman said that when it rains, she couldn’t leave here house if she was in, or go back to it if she was out. “My question is: how can I go home when it rains?” she asked the official.

“I know there is damage, I know I have to do something to fix it,” Robert Mendoza, the public works director, said. “But it doesn’t mean FEMA agrees with me.”

The Mendoza started to tell people how he is working very hard to put new street signs in the neighborhood and that it is not easy to do that!

“I don’t care about street signs,” the woman told him in a loud and angry voice, “I know where I live.”

“To FEMA,” one banner on a wall said, “respect our homes.”

I got it now. I know why the invasion of Iraq was messed up and there was no planning for post-war Iraq. The same people that are messing up New Orleans were involved in Iraq. The same officials, contractors and unqualified “experts.”

No wonder why reconstruction in Iraq didn’t start right away after the invasion and why it took so long that it afterwards became impossible because people were already angry and the insurgency was fueled. No wonder why Iraq has deteriorated to what it is now. It is because the people who are involved in Iraq don’t know how to solve problems in their own country or to help their own people. How would they succeed in a country on the other side of the globe?!

Not all my trip was sad. At night, we went to the French Quarter, where all the fun is. If you click on the video section, you will see a street in the French quarter. Crazy. This is another video I want to share with you.

I ate the famous beignet, a lot! I rode the mechanical bull after three or four shots of I don’t know what [I couldn’t care less. It was tasty!] I didn’t last on the bull more than three or four seconds! And this is also another thing that made me compare Baghdad to New Orleans. After every war Iraq has fought, the streets became even more fun than before. After the invasion in 2003, many restaurants reopened and opened and many places were opened for people who wanted to have fun. Not anymore though.

A lot needs to be done in New Orleans. All what it takes is one visit to the city. Bush should go visit the city. But he has to know that it shouldn’t be the same way John McCain visited Baghdad! It should be the way I visited New Orleans. Talk to ordinary people and see what they are going through. He shouldn’t hide in the city hall or wherever he hides every time he pretends to visit a place. Not until officials in this administration stroll in the streets of New Orleans the city is going to get the help it needs.

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki.

The LA Times today reported that the U.S. Army is erecting a three-mile-stretch wall in Baghdad to isolate the Sunni residents of Adhamiya neighborhood from the Shiites around them. A kind of a “separation wall” in the middle of Baghdad to show where the Shiites are and where the Sunnis.

This is a new fruit of the “liberation” of Iraq. The efforts of Iraqis and the hundreds of thousands of innocents killed are finally paying off. Enjoy it Iraqis, it is formal now. You didn’t want a federal Iraq, now you have a federal Baghdad!

What are they doing? What are the Americans doing in Iraq? Isn’t there anyone to say “No. stop it. It is not how it should be done.” ?!

The reason the U.S. Army put for this wall is that when insurgents conduct their attacks in Shiite neighborhoods, they will have more obstacles to go through before they go back to their bases with the wall installed!

You know, everything is working out very well and the security plan is succeeding, but because the insurgents can flee the bombing scenes fast that they are successful! The wall could have prevented the bombings that killed more than 200 Iraqis yesterday. The wall will prevent Shiite militias from going house to house to kidnap innocents, torture them and kill them. The wall will be a major reconstruction example of rebuilding Iraq. And it will be a good motivation for those who fled the country or were displaced inside Iraq to return to their homes!

What is this wall going to do other than provoke the Iraqis against each other more and more?

Who is going to prevent the Shiite militias from killing the Sunnis then? The victims of terrorism in Iraq are only Shiites?

You still don’t believe there is civil war in Iraq?

Do you still ask “why Iraqis are not happy with what the Americans are doing? Why aren’t they grateful?” how can they be grateful when they see everyday another part of their city that they cannot visit anymore? How can they be happy when they watch their neighborhoods, the places they grew up in and around, being isolated and slowly destroyed?

Is that what the Iraqi government promising Iraq now? Sectarian divisions?

Millions of my people confronted the insurgents and Shiite militias back in Dec. 2005 and went to polling centers to vote for politicians, who the least they promised was “a better future.” Is that how they award the Iraqis who chose to die and not let the terrorists decide what kind of government Iraq gets?

Separation wall? A 12-foot-high barrier! I cant even start talking about this. It stabs me deep in my heart to even think about it. What will the neighborhood be called? “The Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya?” or “The Sunni area of northern Baghdad?”

Adhamiya people are not terrorists. There are terrorists in Adhamiya, yes. But why should the innocent, in addition to their daily miseries, be separated? Why should they feel like they are living in a zoo?

There are terrorists in Kadhimiya, Sadr City, Husseiniya, Palestine Street and other Shiite neighborhoods. Why should Adhamiya get the punishment? Why should the Sunnis get the punishment?

The U.S. administration and the Iraqi government have to know that this will be interpreted, like many other issues before, as a way to oppress the Sunnis and satisfy the Shiites. And this is in my opinion is not true, because the Shiites are getting nothing out of anything the government and the Americans are doing in Iraq. The average Sunnis and Shiites are the only losers in Iraq now. But, everything the Americans and Iraqi government are doing in Iraq now is provoking more and more sectarian divisions and civil war.

It is like they insist on destroying my country. They insist. And they succeed.

Who is advising them? Who is giving them these suggestions? Whoever they are, clearly they are trying to add more and more failure to the U.S. project in Iraq.

Painting by Iraqi Artist Betool Fekaiki

Muqtada al-Sadr threatened to “withdraw” from the political process in Iraq. Masoud Barzani, president of Kurdistan region, attacked Turkey and accused it of meddling in Iraq’s internal affairs. Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister, was offended and there are talks about arguments in the government about the power of the federal government against the powers of regional governments, which in this case is only Kurdistan.

Jalal Talbani, the President, apologized to the Turkish Prime Minster, which made Barzani comes back and say that he didn’t threat anyone and doesn’t accept threats from anyone.

The Iraqi Islamic Party, one of the biggest Sunni parties in Iraq and a key player in the useless parliament, is threatening again to suspend its participation in the government.

Barzani is calling Kirkuk “an Iraqi city with a Kurdish identity” now. That makes the Arabs and Turkumans furious, but he doesn’t care. He wants to deal with the Kirkuk issue and no one else wants to do it.

Maliki is touring Asia now. You know, Iraq is perfectly happy and stable, so the prime minister is having fun around.

All this is happening when more and more Iraqis are getting killed and bullet-riddled bodies have become the usual findings of every day in and around Baghdad.

I reported on the election campaigns in 2005 and heard and witnessed what the politicians promised the Iraqis if they elected them. Where are they now?

Do you now see why I am frustrated with “democracy?” Do we still believe in “democracy” in Iraq. A democracy that is led by those people. The ones who are living in a world that is totally remote from the Iraqis’ life? We don’t have the right people to rule with democracy now. We need to change the approach.

When are the decision makers going to wake up and listen?

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

The Associated Press reported that the Shiites’ top clerics opposed a draft law that was supposed to give hundreds of thousands of Iraqis their jobs back. The law, if enacted, would allow the baathists who were excluded by Bremer’s debaathification decree to come back to their old jobs or at least give them a chance to start a new life.

Apparently, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the top Shiite marjiya, or authority, doesn’t think that the Iraqis, who were baathists, should be allowed to make a living anymore. Ahmed Chalabi, who heads the debaathification committee, met with Sistani and other Shiite marjiya and was quoted in the AP as saying “The grand ayatollahs said it is dangerous for the criminals to return to leading posts in the state.”

The debaathification decree affected Iraqis who were in the fifth rank of the party and above. The party had nine ranks [that I can remember.]

But did Sistani ask himself “who those people are?” They are Iraqis. No matter what he and his alike are trying to do, they are Iraqis and will always be Iraqis. How can they provide their families if they don’t have jobs? How can the government blame them if they collaborate with the insurgents to get some money and feed their children?

No one can deny that the Iraqis had to be baathists to get jobs, especially in the ten years before the invasion in 2003. They had to be at least Muayid, or supporter.

In high schools, the administrations sometimes forced students to enroll in baath party. It happened in my high school: one day the principal came to each classroom and ordered all of us to register our names. Of course I didn’t, but that was because I knew the principal. But many others had to register in the party because if not “you will all fail this year,” the principal said.

Many universities and colleges required baath party registration in order to enroll student, like Saddam University, education college, the medical institute, the teachers institute, the fine arts college, the fine arts institute, the military academy, the police academy, and many others. What could students do? And once you register, they will promote you like it or not and I am a witness on that because I’ve had friends who registered in high school and never thought about it until years later they were told that they are three or four ranks higher!

When I applied to The College of Fine Arts to study pottery and ceramics, which is one of my hobbies, my application was denied because I wasn’t a baathist.

The range of monthly salaries of the average Iraqis was between $3 and $6, in the time when the price of a kilo of sugar was 50 cents. And to get bonuses, the employees had to get promoted in the baath party. Each rank had a price. From Muayid you get to be Naseer then Utho, or member, then Utho Amil or active member, then Utho Shu’ba or class member, then Utho Firqa or division member then Utho Qiyada Qutriya or regional leadership member then Utho Qiyada Qawmiya or national leadership member and I think that’s it.

Most of the Iraqis who were baathists were either active members or class members or division members because that’s when they actually got promotions and bonuses. And we are talking about maximum of $20 a month, no more!

Saddam Hussein’s government put the number of baathists in Iraq to seven million members, although “all Iraqis are baathists even if they didn’t register,” Saddam Hussein always said.

When Bremer issued the decree, it affected millions of Iraqis. They lost their jobs and had no income for months. The ministries couldn’t work because they technically lost every qualified person in Iraq. Who had to join the party? Those who had to be promoted because they were over qualified for their old jobs. And who are they? They are the teachers, principals, engeneers, doctors, managers, general managers and others who knew how things worked in every ministry in the country.

When the U.S. administration realized that the decree was wrong, and that happened very very late as usual, they asked the Iraqi government to issue exceptions and to return some of those who lost their jobs back. I interviewed one official in the debaathification committee when I was in Baghdad and I don’t remember the number of the Iraqis who were still affected by debaathification that he gave me, but it was more than 20,000 and less than 30,000. I remember him saying “it only affects …. That’s all. I don’t know why the Iraqis are upset.”

Only 20,000! Do you know how many families this number makes and how many children?

Plus, I don’t believe that Sistani, the Iraqi government and the American administration are that stupid to believe that the high ranking baathists, who had power to hurt people and benefit from the government, are still in the country. Those who should be affected by the debaathification decree are already outside Iraq, either in Syria or Jordan or the UAE or Yemen, and are living the best life ever using the money they stole from the Iraqi banks and government. Those who should be punished are not in Iraq to be affected by debaathification. They have left in the very early days after the invasion in 2003. Why would they stay?

Sistani wants Iraqis to starve to death now. Why doesn’t he want Iraqis to go back to their jobs? They are Iraqis no matter what anyone in the world thinks. When we don’t allow them to work, that means we are adding to the unemployed, to the poverty level, to the insurgents groups and to the uneducated people in the future of Iraq.

When someone like Sistani and other religious figures go public saying “the baathists don’t deserve jobs,” that actually adds to the turmoil in the country. I cannot help but think that such a move provokes more hatred and sectarian conflict to the civil war that’s already on in Iraq.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the poisonous snake/Mullah and leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, had already asked the Shiites to massacre the baathists. He asked them in public. I wrote an entry about it.

I cannot understand when someone like this Sistani says “no. don’t give them jobs” what do they mean? So, how shall we deal with this unemployed population of Iraq? because it is not enough to say “don’t give them jobs.” We have to deal with the consequences of this decision. Those are not Iranian or Syrians or Egyptians, who if didn’t get jobs in Iraq can go back to their countries. Those are Iraqis.

But how should Sistani know about unemployment and what it means or how hard it is to not have a job and cannot provide a family. He is unemployed and never had to work, yet he gets millions of dollars a year from other people’s hard work. Convenient! A typical decision-maker, who knows nothing about people’s life and the circumstances, and yet get to decide how people should live!

And hey, Sistani, don’t make me start about who is Iraqi and who is not!


Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

take24stepstofreedom@yahoo.com