24 Steps to Liberty

It's Our Iraq, We Know More!

2008-04-15T10:41:00.002-07:00

A while ago, when the Turkish troops were bombing northern Iraq in their effort to root out the Kurdish anti-Turkish government, PKK, and when the Iraqi gang, including the Kurdish leaders, were silent about the attacks that killed dozens of innocent Iraqis, I wrote an entry telling the readers my own analysis of the situation. In the entry, I said that the whole issue is a behind-closed-doors deal with the Turks, Americans and Iraqis to solve several issues. The issues, as I saw them, were: Iraqi Kurdish side: the Oil Law, which was opposed by the Iraqi political gangs; the issue of Kirkuk, which was delayed over and over again by the Iraqi gang; the issue of Kurdistan’s share of Iraq’s revenues, which the Kurds wanted it to be 17% and the Iraqi gang only offered 14%; and the salaries of the pes merga, the Kurdish security forces.

In my entry, I said that in order for the Americans, who label the PKK “terrorist group, and the Turks, who consider the PKK a dangerous political rival, to get rid of the PKK, they needed the Iraqi Kurds to allow the attacks. The deal was, I thought, that the Kurdistan government will be silent and only verbally “condemn the offensive actions” in northern Iraq as long as the Americans help the Kurds to solve the issues above with the Iraqi government.

Now, here is the news:

Yesterday, the Iraqi gang, headed of course by Dawa party and SIIC, signed on the Oil Law, as was proposed at the beginning with no amendments, even though the Iraqi parliament amended several articles and did not agree on the first draft. [that shows how much effective and respected the Iraqi parliament is!] The law gives the Kurdistan government total control of the oil wells and refineries in Kurdistan.

The Iraqi gang also signed an agreement that tasks the Iraqi Ministry of Defense with paying the salaries of the pesh merga, which number about 200,000.

The Iraqi gang also signed an agreement to put a new timeframe for Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution, which deals with the city of Kirkuk and its future. The UN will be supervising the process.

Now you believe that Iraqis who have lived in Iraq all there lives and struggled through the baathist regime and suffered and lived through three wars, an invasion and fatal sanctions and survived, know much much more about Iraqi politics and the former “opposition” leaders and their interests than anyone else on the planet?

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

The Blog is Back!

2008-04-09T23:19:00.001-07:00

Dear readers,
The blog is back! But this is a temporary site until I get my own website up and running, soon.

Here is the entry that I tried to post last week and I couldn’t:

THE GAME of “Iraq politics” started to irritate me, and millions of other Iraqis. Every day we realize more that what Iraq has turned into is not worth the sacrifice we’ve paid in the last five years. One of the results of that, unfortunately, is that now Iraqis compare Iraq under the dictator Saddam Hussein to the Iraqi they live in now, and believe that under Hussein the situation was much better.

But as one of them, I understand where the Iraqis come from when they make such comparison and conclusion. What the country has turned into after the invasion in 2003 gives the average Iraqi no space to think about he benefits we’ve been given by just toppling Saddam Hussein. When they compare the number of enemies and criminals in the streets now, and the number of threats they face these days to the one enemy they had under Hussein, which is the government itself, they realize that it was easier to survive under the former dictatorship than now. At least they knew the redlines and they tried not to cross them into the danger. But now, there are no redlines. Everyone is a target and for no reason. Just a target.

From a country with unified borders and security forces that protected everyone, except the government’s opposition, to lawless territories where no one is safe, not even inside their houses. From a country where the education system was deteriorating, but still produced students who are now acing their way through the world’s best universities, including American universities, to a land where just being a student makes you a target.

Sunni areas are dangerous for Shiites, and vice versa. We don’t have Iraqi provinces now. Instead, we have Shiite territories and Sunni territories. And in Baghdad, Diyala and Kirkuk, the only provinces where populations of different backgrounds still exist, they don’t live together; there are different neighborhoods for different sects and ethnicities. In Baghdad, they are separated by “separation walls.”

All this was done without even asking the Iraqis themselves. Maybe they would have agreed on the separation, maybe not. But the average Iraqis weren’t asked.

And to make it worse, two parliament members proposed to separate Sadr city and make it a province by itself.

And the Maliki government is still in power!

I believe what is happening in and to Iraq is because the lack of politics. We don’t have politicians in the country. The decision makers in Iraq now [and by “decision makers” I mean the people who stir things up and launch campaigns to kill Iraqis and terrify the rest to control the country] are Nouri al-Maliki, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, Adnan al-Dulaimi and Muqtada al-Sadr. None of them is a politician, or has any amount of experience in politics or international relations. None of them has a network of advisors beyond their relations with Iran, or tribal traditions and power. They’ve kidnapped Iraq. None of them has friends in the international community and therefore, we see them acting alone and are backed by no one, but Bush, who, ironically, is exactly like them [has no political experience or international experience prior to being president.]

Those people are holding Iraq hostage. A country led by Quran interpretations [and they are many and they differ] will never have the chance to stand on its feet.

A 1000 Iraqi security forces members, including high ranking officers, refused to participate in the military operations against the Mehdi Army in Basra last week. To deal with this, Maliki went to Shiite tribes, whose leaders support his terrorist Dawa party, and asked them for back up. He included 10,000 Shiite militia members in the Iraqi security forces in the last two weeks. What does that mean?

Maliki is forming a shield of armed supporters around him and his terrorist party. He is preparing to take over Iraq and run it alone.

This is exactly what Saddam Hussein did when the Baath party took power in 1968. He assassinated a few of his enemies in the party and then, with family members and supporters from his clan, he formed Jihaz Hunein, which was the equivalent of the criminal Badr organization now. Jihaz Hunein was responsible for the assassinations of everyone that disagreed with the Baath party ideologies. And that was the beginning of the Saddam Hussein era.

Am I the only one whose seeing this?!

News from Iraqi Newspapers

2008-03-25T17:17:00.005-07:00

Iraqi newspapers had some in-detail news stories today that I thought worth looking into. Unfortunately, the news go along with what I, and other Iraqis, expected to happen in Iraq in the next few months.

Heavy clashes erupted today between Iraqi security forces and al-Mahdi army in Basra, biggest city in southern Iraq. More than 5 killed so far and 18 wounded.

In Baghdad, eyewitnesses said that Mehdi army members planted IEDs around Sadr city, their haven, to prevent the US and Iraqi forces from entering the city. Also, Mehdi army members used mortars and small arms fire to attack several police stations in Kasra W Atash, Ur neighborhood, Orfely neighborhood and othe neighborhoods around Sadr city. They also attacked offices of fellow Shiite groups like Badr Organization and Dawa Party in and around Sadr city.

Sadr announced “civil” disobedience in Baghdad and Basra today. In Baghdad, Mehdi army members controlled the streets in western Baghdad and blocked the roads, they threatened to arrest anyone goes to school, work or the market. They paralyzed the western side of Baghdad today.

In Basra, the city was described as empty but from the Shiite militias and Iraqi security forces today. Clashes in the streets and people stayed home, fearing to get caught in the mayhem. Dead bodies were seen in the streets, but no one dared to pick them up. Eyewitnesses said that armed men control much of the city now, positioned on the roofs of many houses and shooting at anyone they see in the streets.

Munjid Salahudeen Ritha, the director of the Baghdad morgue, said that the number of bodies found dead in Baghdad has been increasing in the last 15 days. “The morgue receives 15 bodies per day now,” he said.

“The surge is successful.” !!!

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

Note: Ali has published a new post.

What Will Happen in Iraq in the Next Few Months?

2008-03-15T21:43:00.003-07:00

Of course we hear very little about the increasing violence in Iraq in the last few weeks. If we think about it, it makes sense that the US media is not interested in reporting this increase because, the way I see it, the phase now is to lobby and advocate for the US presidential candidates. Each one of them has a “brilliant” strategy to save American troops, but all of them are talking about withdrawing troops from Iraq at some point, and that point does not even mention the Iraqis themselves, who are in dire need for the troops now, and in the coming few months.

But this is not the point that I want to make in this post. My point is the increase of violence.

Car bombs are killing dozens of Iraqis every day. Kidnappings are back to the daily life [as we expected] mutilated bodies are back in the streets, Kurdistan is now under threats of car bombs like the one in Sulaimaniya a few days ago [and I expect more car bombs in the Kurdish region in the coming few months,] statements from Muqtada al-Sadr are back threatening to start another phase in the ongoing civil war in Iraq and the Sunnis in Anbar are openly threatening to rise against the government again [the Council of Anbar Province has put a deadline to meet its demands and the deadline is tomorrow!]

Several days ago, Shiite militias in Kut in southern Iraq carried their guns and started to fight US troops and Iraqi security forces. It is an ongoing fighting and all the sides are losing casualties every day.

And the Nouri al-Maliki regime announced today that it will hold yet another “national reconciliation conference” on Tuesday. The conference will “work to build the state of law,” said a statement by Maliki’s press office. The statement also said that the Maliki regime believes that “it is an equal right for everyone to participate in the political process.”

To show the Maliki regime really believe in what it said in the statement, four days ago Maliki’s office announced that to overcome the shortage in the number of ministers in the cabinet after several of ministers withdrew months ago, the regime decided to replace some of the withdrawn ministers by appointing people without going back to the parliament and shrink the cabinet. [last year, 18 ministers from the Sadr, Allawi and Sunni groups suspended their participation in the cabinet, including the Justice, Health, education and higher Education. The Maliki cabinet total 41 ministers.]

Background:
Muqtada al-Sadr announced a truce with the Maliki regime six or eight moths ago. Sadr ordered his criminals to stop shedding the blood of innocent Iraqis for a while, until his demands were met. His announced demands included: a timetable for foreign troops withdrawal from Iraq, start the reconstruction process and facilitate the return of the Iraqi displaced and refugee populations and secure their areas and an end to the federalization project.

Several months ago, the Sunni group, Tawafuk Front, suspended its participation in the cabinet and put a few demands for the government to meet before they can participate in the government again. Their announced demands included: suspension of the debaathification decree and the return of qualified Iraqi's to their jobs to help run the falling state, the release of “innocent Iraqis” who are in US military or Iraqi regime prisons, facilitate the return of the Iraqi displaced and refugee populations and secure their areas, an end to the federalization project and more involvement in the planning and execution of security operations.

Ayad Allawi’s group, the Iraqi National Accord, suspended its participation in the government several months ago because, they said, they did not want to be part of the “sectarian political process” in the country. They demanded a “real national reconciliation,” facilitate the return of the Iraqi displaced and refugee populations and secure their areas and an end to the intervention of Iran in Iraq’s internal and external affairs.

The Kurds demanded a solution for the issue of Kirkuk. According to the constitution, a referendum should have been held in December to decide whether the residents of the city want their city to be part of Kurdistan or not. But the MAliki regime keeps ignoring the issue. Also, they asked the regime to sign the Oil Law, or find another one, and the regime is ignoring the issue too.

The Bush administration has started, although to little too late, an effort to bring to the table leaders of the so called “Iraqi resistance” and former high ranking baathists to try to quell the violence. The US military also held talks with members of the opposition against the Maliki regime to try to compromise and find ways to include them in the decision making process. the US military was also trying to find ways to convince the Maliki regime to start taking charge of the process to bring back the displaced Iraqis to their homes.

And the US military succeeded to turn many Sunnis against al-Qaeda and recruited them to fight side by side with US troops and root out hundreds of insurgents and militias. For the first time in years, the Iraqis felt like they are fighting for their country back, not against each other.

What was Maliki’s response?

It authorized more and more raids on houses in the Sadr city and in Najaf, in which hundreds of Sadr followers [innocent and involved in violence] were arrested, and are still in prison with no charges or hope for release.

It authorized more and more raids on Sunni areas and provinces, in which hundreds of Sunnis [innocent and involved in violence] were arrested, and are still in prison with no charges or hope for release.

It integrated 18000 more Shiite militia members in the Iraqi security forces and ignited serious concerns in the Iraqi community because people are afraid that more criminals were brought into the security forces to help in the ongoing ethnic and sectarian cleansing.

It refused to integrate Sunni Awakening Council members, number more than 80,000, in the Iraqi security forces and refused to pay their salaries and arrested many of them [the excuse was that they belong to insurgents groups.]

Representatives from the Maliki regime visited several neighboring and regional countries and struck deals with them to force out the Iraqi refugees [because it is a political suicide for the regime to allow millions of Iraqis to leave the country. The world will start to ask: why are they leaving if everything is going right in Iraq?] And the regime sent buses to bring back the refugees for free and promised them $800 per family to help them get started again. But when the refugees arrived, they found themselves homeless because their houses were broken into by militias and insurgents. They couldn’t go back to their houses, the Maliki regime cannot help them or secure their houses, and now they are displaced within their country. And the $800 was a lie!

The Maliki regime passed an amendment to the debaathification decree, only it was not amended and nothing was changed but a few words, in which I believe they used a thesaurus to mean the same old thing!

Maliki invited Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Iraq and signed dozens of security and economy treaties and contracts with him, when most of the Iraqis don’t want Iran to be involved in anything in Iraq!

The Maliki regime announced that it is going to shrink the cabinet to deal with the issue of the missing ministers!

That means: The demands of the participating political groups in Iraq are not being discussed, compromised or met. And that means that the reasons why those groups agreed to sit around one table and negotiate in the first place is missing. Why should Sadr continue the truce? Why should the Sunnis and Allawi’s group come back to the cabinet? Even if Sadr announced an extension to the truce, does that mean that, behind closed doors, he is not going to order his criminals to resume the violence, but why? What is he going to get if he helps to quell the violence? And even if the ministers went back to the cabinet, aren’t they still in disagreement with the Maliki regime, or at least their political groups are in total disagreement with the regime because their demands were ignored? How are they going to run the country if the disagree on everything?

And why should the refugees and displaced trust the regime?

In a few words: The Maliki regime is sabotaging every single effort the US administration and military are trying to organize in Iraq. And of course, it is sabotaging what the qualified Iraqis are trying to do to help the country.

And now when we want to predict what will happen in Iraq in the next few months, it will be easy:

The number of car bombs will increase not double, not triple, but seven or eight times. The number of beheaded and mutilated bodies will increase all over Iraq. The Kurds will get more violence in their region to keep the Kurds busy with violence and postpone the issues they are concerned about. Kirkuk will be the stage of a blood bath to force the Maliki regime to find a way to deal with the issue. The Awakening Councils will be targeted more and more in the next few months. And of course, the electricity, fuel and other infrastructure will always be missing.

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

Take a Right. Go Right!

2008-03-11T21:47:00.011-07:00

Staffan de Mistura, the UN representative in Iraq, met with Ali al-Sistani in Najaf yesterday and “discussed the political and security situation” in the country.

That did not surprise me, given that the international community is desperate and clueless on the Iraqi issue that everyone is trying to find a way out. But the news made me wonder: Why do they insist on doing exactly what the Iraqis are asking them not to do?

Is that how it came down to in Iraq? One of the richest countries in the world, absolutely the richest in history and civilization and until recently produced some of the world’s brightest scientists, doctors, engineers, professors and artists-- now is reduced to a shell of its former self and is led by a turbaned foreigner, whose interested in nothing but to get a fifth of each rich Shiite’s income every year?

Iraq now is formally led by someone whose mission in life is, and should always be, answering questions like: Is it necessary for a woman to compensate the prayers and fasts which she missed during menses?

Or Is it permissible to manufacture, sell, or buy musical instruments that are made for children’s play? And is it permissible for adults to use them?

Questions quoted from Sistani’s website. You can read more here.

That’s his job. Not to demean him or disrespect his knowledge, but that’s what the man is good for-- answering this kind of questions is all he is trained to do. And some people need someone like him in their life.

How is that possible? 25 million Iraqis, and we cannot find 10 qualified men and women to run the country! Or maybe someone is not looking in the right place?

Who is Sistani to come and tell me and my family what to do and who to vote for? As a religious man, I respect him and his background. But that’s about it. I wouldn’t go further and ask him about anything else. He did not study politics. He did not study economy. He did not study international relations, and definitely didn’t serve in the military. The man hasn’t left his house in years. How can he be reliable or qualified to answer questions about the situation in Iraq?

This man has damaged Iraq more than anyone else, or I should say as much as Harith al-Dhari has, by just being silent. How can I trust him on my country’s long awaited unity when he encourages people to disrespect each other?

Read this, which I found on his website:
Is it permissible to offer congregational prayers behind a Sunni prayer leader?

And instead of saying: of course. You are both Muslims. You are both Iraqis and you are brothers, which any respectful human being would say, this Mullah answered: It is permissible but you must recite Hamd and Sura yourself even though the recitation may be in low voice.

Which is to say: reciting Quran by the Sunnis doesn’t count. You should do it yourself. Is that the reply of a man who wants to quell the religious and ethnic conflict in Iraq?

And now, the UN comes to ask him for advice on how to proceed in Iraq! And Mistura said “this is the first visit and there will be other visits to discuss the situation with him and ask for advice.”

Iraqis are fed up with religious leaders, Sunnis and Shiites. We do not want them to meddle in our lives anymore. They can continue to advice on menstrual issues and pilgrimage, because that’s what they’ve studied and have been preaching. But that’s it. Nothing more.

I’ve said this over and over again in the last two years, but no one wants to believe an Iraqi talking about Iraq! But now, the New York Times has finally figured it out.

After almost five years of war, many young people in Iraq, exhausted by constant firsthand exposure to the violence of religious extremism, say they have grown disillusioned with religious leaders and skeptical of the faith that they preach.

Why does the international community keep going against the Iraqis’ will? Why do we have to keep yelling “take a right. Take right. We’ll be lost if you don’t.” And the person behind the wheel insists on going left?

Why does the US and the UN keep involving religious figures, and not even the moderate ones, in the political process in Iraq? Who is advising them, if any?

Sistani and Dhari, and people like them, have never and will never be the solution for Iraq. How many times do we have to repeat this, and how many more Iraqis have to die, for the world to realize that we want qualified politicians, not turbaned snakes?

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

And They Still Call It A Government!

2008-02-26T11:49:00.005-08:00

It’s been several days since the Turkish forces launched their big military operation in northern Iraq to rout out the Kurdish separatists, the PKK. And I have yet to see a serious reaction from the Iraqi government, or at least from the Kurdish forces.

Nouri al-Maliki “condemned” the Turkish attacks. The Kurdish leaders’ statements were came a little short of vowing to defend their territories. And the US administration, which is, in the eyes of Iraqis, responsible for protecting the average Iraqis, only said “We urged the Turkish government to limit their operations to precise targeting of the PKK; to limit the scope and duration of their operations.”

That left me to wonder: why is it so casual that Turkey is invading Iraqi lands, attacking its territories and as a result forcing out hundreds of Iraqi families out of their homes and turn them into homeless population?

We don’t have a real government in Iraq. So, when the Turkish government informed the Iraqi gang about the military operation beforehand, the Iraqi gang did not try to secure a safe place for the displaced, which doesn’t surprise me!

It is unreasonable that the Iraqi government is not taking all necessary steps to stop the Turkish attacks. If the government is not protecting its people from terrorist attacks around Iraq, is not providing jobs for Iraqis, is not rebuilding the country, is not giving financial support for widows and orphans, is not improving, or for that matter recreating the infrastructure in the country, is not housing the homeless returnees after they were forced out of Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, is not bringing hope back in Iraq, WHY IS IT STILL IN POWER?

And the Kurds. They have the pesh merga. Where is the pesh merga? Why aren’t they defending Kurdistan? I find it very appalling that their territories are invaded and attacked and they don’t try to defend it. In any country in the world, unless it’s Iraq in spring 2003, if an invader attacks, people are legally allowed, and are supposed to defend their lands. Why is the Kurdish government so quite about this and only “promise to defend ourselves if this continues,” when we know very well that the Kurds have no good relations and don’t trust the Turkish government?

I had to go deeper with this issue. And this is what I came with:

The Kurdish leaders want a separate Kurdistan state eventually. Of course they cannot achieve this separation without the American blessings. The current Iraqi gang, represented by the Shiite turbaned snakes and the Iraqi Islamic party, only disagree with the Kurds in public. But in fact they don’t care whether Iraq is one state or three or four, as long as their bank accounts are fed regularly. [I hope this fact doesn’t require a new evidence by now!]

The PKK is based in Kurdistan. It is internationally labeled a “terrorist” group and the United States wants to eliminate its threat because of that. Turkey on the other hand wants to eliminate the PKK because it’s considered the government’s main political rival, and like in any Middle Eastern government, rivals should be executed.

The Kurdish leaders have long used the PKK as a Joker card in their relations with Turkey. It is there when the Turkish government decides to mess with the Kurdish region in Iraq, militarily or economically. Because the PKK is hosted in Kurdistan, they are in debt to the Kurdish government. The Kurdish leaders can easily unleash the PKK operators to disturb Turkey, even if for a short period of time.

Therefore, I think the deal was as follows:

The Turkish government wants to get rid of its rivals, the PKK. Of course they cannot do that without a permission from the US administration. So, the Turkish leaders waved the pressure card; the US bases in Turkey. Turkey promised to not raise the issue of these bases, or how long they will be there, as long as the Turkish forces are allowed into Iraq to fight the PKK. PKK, labeled “terrorist” group by the US. So, it is a mutual interest to end its power.

The Kurdish government, represented by Jalal Talbani and Masoud Barzani, is very upset with the Shiites and the Sunnis in the Iraqi gang over two main issues: 1- city of Kirkuk and 2- the share of Kurdistan region in Iraq’s budget, which the Kurds say should be 17% plus the salaries of the pesh merga and the Iraqi gang says it should be 14% and the pesh merga salaries should be included. And these two issues have been on the table since mid 2003, which means they’ll never reach a compromise on them. So, they want to start the process of separation earlier. Who is going to prevent them!

So, it came down to this:

- The US promised the Kurds to put pressure on the Iraqi gang to give Kurdistan the 17% of Iraq’s annual budget plus enough cash to pay the pesh merga.
- The Turkish government promised the US to stop negative intervention in the region Kurdistan if the US opened the Iraqi borders for the Turkish troops to invade Iraq. The US on the other hand promised more help and support with Turkey’s the European Union issue if Turkey helped eliminate the terrorist group.
- Barzani and Talbani will be quiet on the invasion and only “condemn” until the Turkish military operation is over.

One thing the Kurdish government in Iraq did not think through: Turkey will never let the Kurds have their own separate state. They’ve never done, and they will never do.

PS: Ali has a new post.

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

Shoo Them Away!

2008-01-25T14:38:00.000-08:00

A delegation from The Arab League, headed by its Deputy Secretary General Ahmed Ben Hili, was scheduled to arrive to Baghdad next week to hold talks with the leading political groups in Iraq and try to find a way to free them from the bottleneck they put themselves into. But Nouri al-Maliki suddenly asked them to postpone the visit, without giving them an alternative timetable.

Ali al-Dabbagh, spokesman of the Iraqi government, said that the reason for the postponement was to “give Maliki and the political groups enough time to prepare for the talks,” which I thought is a very good answer, except that it is a big fat lie!

We have to realize that this visit has been in the planning for almost a year now, since Iraq, Syria, Iran and the United States held their talks in Iraq last February. At the time, the Arab League wanted a bigger role in Iraq’s political process and they offered to go to Iraq and help the political groups to “reconcile.”

It is a very good idea “give Maliki and the political groups enough time to prepare.” And then I ran the names of the Iraqi political groups that are big enough to hold talks and got these names: Dawa Party, Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, Iraqi Accordance Front, Sadr Trend, Iraqi National Accord, Fadhila Party, Kurdistan Democratic Party, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

Then I thought: wait a minute; the Iraqi political groups are the same groups in the Iraqi government, which is in power since early 2006. Haven’t they got enough time to “reconcile” already?

And, wait a minute; the Iraqi political groups not only have been in power since early 2006, but they’ve been the same political groups that were in power in the first Iraqi government, which was seated in early 2005. I thought three years were enough to “reconcile.”

Then I remembered: those Iraqi political groups were participants in Iyad Allawi’s government, which was seated in mid 2004. And at the time, they were all going around on TV stations and newspapers inside and outside Iraq talking about “the national unity government” and “reconciliation.”

I wasn’t upset with what I found because we already expected that. And by we, I mean the Iraqis who really understand the background and interests of the Iraqi political groups, and their sycophants.

But my mind didn’t stop there. It hit me hard when I thought: but these are the same groups that formed the Iraqi Governing Council. And before that, they were all “together in the struggle against Saddam Hussein Regime” and formed one opposition umbrella group in 1991 called The Iraqi National Congress.

Technically, the current Iraqi political groups had 18 years to reconcile, and yet they haven’t. What does that tell you?

I guess the Bush administration should have asked me about the opposition groups, I would have said: Well, think about it this way: the Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmed Chalabi, failed and everyone of the groups took off and formed their own fronts. That’s probably not a good sign!

If I knew that, and I was in my teens, how could the Bush administration “geniuses” not notice that?

I say it again and again: this Maliki government is nothing but a sectarian tool that is trying, and unfortunately succeeding, in splitting Iraq into ugly extreme Islamic pockets, labeling it “Shiite, Sunni” and into a hideous ethnic regions.

This government has not done anything that we as Iraqis can point at and say “this is better for us.” Nothing, And I dare anyone in the government to come out and give me one example of something done for the sake of Iraqis.

Maliki’s gang is not interested at all in Iraq, unless we consider destroying its heritage and future an interest. And what pains me, and most Iraqis, is that no one of the respected political groups is trying to do anything about it.

I left Iraq 18 months ago and when I left, the situation was like this: no electricity, no water, no trash collectors and so on. The situation now is much much worse because it’s 18 months later and there are no annual renovations for the streets or the infrastructure, and the insurgency and militias are still free.

Here is evidence from someone living in Baghdad now:

It has been more than three weeks since we have had any power from the national grid at our house. We don’t consider it that much of a difference because even in "normal'' times we get just one hour of power during the day and another hour at night. We don’t bother anymore to ask about the reasons behind this or when the electricity might be fixed and come back.

How many Iraqis are living like this now? And the government is not even bothering with listening to the average Iraqis. They are busy taking stars off the Iraqi flag and lying about what they represented. They are busy applying on the ground the Iranian Mullahs plan for Iraq, because they only have one more year to go and after that the Iraqis will hold new elections and shoo the black-turbaned and the white-turbaned Mullahs and away once and for ever.

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

NOTE: Ali has published a new post.

Just For... Iran!

2008-01-08T14:44:00.000-08:00

Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq’s Prime Minister, “postponed” the official celebration of the Iraqi Army 86th anniversary, which was January 6th, for “security reasons,” his office said!

I am thinking: Aren’t you, Maliki, the one who has been talking about how “safe and secured” Baghdad has been for the last two months or so? Didn’t your government announced that it was “very safe and security has been maintained” in Baghdad, where the celebration of the Iraqi Army was supposed to be held, and advised the Iraqi refugees to “return to their homes?”

What changed in the last week?

Maliki, wasn’t your government’s mouthpiece, al-Iraqiya TV, air the celebrations of Christmas and New Year’s from “every part of Baghdad and in the streets?”

If the average Iraqis celebrated Christmas and New Year’s in the streets and enjoyed “the achieved security,” like what your propaganda team told the world, why couldn’t you hold the celebration of the Iraqi Army anniversary inside your fortified Green Zone, where it was supposed to take place?

What kind of “security threats” were you thinking about when you asked your press office to write the statement to postpone the celebration? What kind of threats do you have to face in the Green Zone?

I am going to tell you, Maliki, and tell your government and the 275 “parliamentarians”:

The Iraqi Army fought eight years war with Iran. The Iraqi Army killed at least 500,000 Iranians in the 1980s, according to UN statistics. How can you allow the Iraqis to be proud of their army, which defended Iraq against all the threats since 1921? How can you allow that, when it is the same army that failed your Mullahs plans?

The first thing Ibrahim al-Jaafari, you predecessor, did when he was seated was to issue the order to take down one of Iraq’s most beautiful and important monuments, the Martyr Day monument in Palestine Street. That monument depicted the criminal act of the Iranians committed against the Iraqi Prisoners of War in the early 1980s, when they brutally murdered them and mutilated their bodies.

Why did Jaafari issue orders to take that monument down? The Iraqi Army wasn’t Saddam Hussein’s, it was Iraq’s army. And those who were killed by Iranians in that brutal and criminal act were Iraqis and should be immortalized, like it or not.

And what did Jaafari’s government put to replace the monument? A Picture of Muqtada al-Sadr’s father!

What did you do, Maliki, when you first came to power? You issued the orders to take down the Crossed Swords Monument, which is one of Iraq’s most famous and celebrated monuments that depicted the victory of the Iraqi Army against the Iranian Army.

Why did you take the monument down? Was it hurting anybody? It is inside the Green Zone anyway. Why did you take it down? Is it because it was hurting your Iranian breadwinners?

Even if you say “the monument was Saddam Hussein’s delusional victory.” I would say: So? The Iraqis liked it because it is a piece of art that was never repeated anywhere in the world.

If you, Maliki, or one of your government puppets, say “well, we don’t want to have bad relations with our neighbor, Iran, and these monuments remind everybody of the bloody war Saddam Hussein launched against Iran, I will ask you: Did the Iranians take down their monuments from the 1980s period, which depict their war with Iraq?

Every piece of art in Baghdad is going to be taken down, and pictures of turbaned dead men will replace them. The Iraqi art, one of the world’s oldest and most celebrated civilizations, is being replaced with turbans and bearded men.

This is what the Iraqi government is doing now; erase what is left of Iraq’s civilization and history. If anyone goes to Baghdad now, they will never believe that this is the city where civilization started. If you go to Iraq, you would never think that this is the country that is called “cradle of civilization” because you will find nothing but black Abayas and pictures of bearded men in the streets, just like Iran during the time of Khomeini.

This is the new Iraq: A government that has no credibility in the international community and has no friends but the Iranian government, which is committed to destroying what is left of Iraq.

There are more than four million Iraqi refugees outside Iraq, more than two million Iraqis displaced within Iraq, the Kurdish government is totally separate from the central government, the central government has no power to prevent the Kurds from investing in the northern oil wells [which to me is a good thing,] the government has no power to control criminals, insurgents and militias, the government is not taking care of those who were forced to return to Baghdad from Syria and are homeless now, non of the government officials leaves the Green Zone unless in a helicopter, NOT ONE street in Baghdad was paved or renovated since 2002 and early 2003, NOT ONE water plan was renovated since before the invasion. When it rains, Baghdad floods. The ministry of Health is importing suspicious medicines and there is a scandal every week. The ministry of Interior is very corrupt that no one has the ability to start investigating. The ministry of Culture does basically nothing, but it still exists. The ministry of Trade is decreasing the amount of food given to people based on the food stamps and no one is even noticing it. The ministry of Electricity is… well it exists for no reason. The ministry of Oil is exporting oil for five years now, but where is the money? And so on…

What is this government doing there!

But this will not last for longer. Maliki’s plan, and that of the turbaned snakes and poisonous Mullahs in Iraq, Shiite and Sunni, will not succeed. The Iraqis are realizing gradually the mistake they’ve done when they voted for Ali al-Sistani and Harith al-Dhari. They know now that because of their miscalculated vote, Iraq has moved backwards a 100 years.

Islamists will never be able to govern a stable Iraq, nor will Christians. Iraq is a mix of different ethnic and religious backgrounds and it is impossible to compromise, and Iraq is now the evidence. What have we achieved since the Islamists took power in Iraq? Blood baths, men cannot wear shorts even when they play tennis! Women cannot drive or use cell phones in the streets. Women have to wear head scarves, women cannot wear pants, women have to wear Abayas, men cannot walk in the streets with women unless they are relatives, men cannot drink alcohol, university students cannot hold parties and cannot organize trips or picnics. Girls have to wear head scarves inside campuses.

And when I say the truth about Ali al- Sistani and Harith al-Dhari, people call me “sectarian!”

Nothing of what we’ve got from Islamists is useful. Show me one useful thing the turbaned snakes and poisonous Mullahs have given Iraq.

And if you don’t find any, then the question is: Why do we have them in power? And why don’t you like it when I attack them, by logic and evidences?

It's Not Going To Work With Maliki's Kind in Power!

2007-12-22T14:14:00.000-08:00

The Nouri al-Maliki government is still insistent on not allowing the Sunnis to take a role in Iraq’s future. The issue of the Awakening councils is one more evidence on that.

Although the Bush administration is pushing Maliki and his backup groups of turbaned snakes, including Ali al-Sistani, to allow members of the Awakening councils into the Iraqi forces, the Shiite Iraqi government is not making any progress on the issue. Maliki offered to include only 20% of the over 70,000 Sunnis in the Iraqi armed forces and try to “train” the rest to join the public sector.

Why only 20%? Why Ibrahim al-Jaafari in 2005 and Maliki after him included every single Shiite militia member in the Iraqi army and police, and now only 20% of the Sunni Awakening councils will be allowed?

More than a year ago, I wrote a post about how important it is to start the talks with those who call themselves “Iraqi resistance” and said that if you negotiate with the Shiite militias like Bard troops, al-Mehdi army and Fadhila party militias, you have to negotiate with the Iraqi Sunni insurgents too. Otherwise, you will have a country run by Shiite militias, who are fought by Sunni insurgents, and security will never see the way to Iraq.

A year later, as usual, the Bush administration realized that the best way to bring stability to Iraq is by including the Sunnis in its future. Although it was at least two years late, it was a good late start.

We have to understand that if we want stability in Iraq, we have to talk to the Sunnis and try to find a compromise with them. We talked to the Kurds and Shiites and gave them what they wanted, didn’t we?

For so long, Harith al-Dhari and al-Qaeda in Iraq have controlled the Sunni youth and directed them to destroy Iraq and its future. And because the elected governments in Iraq after the invasion were both controlled by traumatized Shiite clergies and influence from Iran, some Sunnis thought the best way to change the future is by fighting against the government, which proved wrong and in the interest of everyone but the Iraqis themselves.

Finally, those deceived Sunnis are back to Iraq [metaphorically speaking] they now realize that Harith al-Dhari is nothing but a criminal who is whining over what he lost after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Most of the Sunnis in Iraq realized, although very late, that while Harith al-Dhari, his son and their henchmen are enjoying their life in Jordan, Egypt and UAE, the average Iraqis are being killed every day just to feed Dhari’s bank accounts. While the Dhari gang is living in luxury outside Iraq, the average Iraqis are living in poverty and danger. That’s what the Sunnis in Baghdad realize now, and that’s where the word Sahwa, or Awakening, came from. They are awake now.

Finally the Sunnis, who were involved in the fight against the U.S. troops and Iraqi government, are fighting Iraq’s real enemy: Harith al-Dhari gang and al-Qaeda.

But Nouri al-Maliki doesn’t want to include them in the Iraqi forces. Why?

See, Maliki’s plan, and of course it is the plan of the traumatized Shiites inside the decision making circle, is to Shiitize the Iraqi political arena, or make it Shiite, and they succeeded in doing that, but they failed to create a state.

The Iraqi Shiites have lost their best chance to prove to the world that they can run a country without turning it into an Islamic theology that negatively affects its relations with the outside world. They were given the chance to prove that not every Shiite regime should be another Iran, or another Hezbollah, but they failed. The average Iraqi Shiites trusted the Shiite “leaders” and thought they will be the way ahead. What they did not put into considerations is: who are those “leaders?”

Hakim? Iran’s weapon against Iraqis and the one who supervised the torture of the Iraqi soldiers in the 1980s? The one who wants to cut a big chunk of Iraq’s map so he can control its oil? The one who came to Iraq calling for the Shiites’ rights and four years later the Shiites are still waiting for the change?

Or Ibrahim al-Jaafari? What did the average Iraqi Shiites get during the time when Jaafari was Prime Minister?

Or maybe Sistani? The Mullah who refused to go to Mecca to meet with other Iraqi religious authorities, Sunnis and Shiites, to publicly denounce the killing of Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq? he refused to go to Mecca, which is the holiest Muslim city in the world and refused to participate in the most noble and important campaign: to stop the bloodshed in Iraq! [all other Sunni and Shiite religious leaders participated or sent representatives.]

Or maybe Fadhila party? The party that is now the reason why Basra is not a stable city and the party that fought with other Shiites over the control of oil in the south.

Or Muqtada al-Sadr? Well, I need to say no more. His name is enough to prove the idea is wrong.

And the list goes on and on.

Therefore, what we’ve got is this:

A government that sent a clear message to all Iraqis: We speak for the Shiites in Iraq, even if they don’t like it. We came back to Iraq and we have people to run the country. Therefore, except for the Kurds, no one else has the right to participate in power, not even the Shiites.

So, the Sunnis decided to fight against the Shiite government [and the U.S. troops because they protected the government.] Then al-Qaeda found its best chance in this gap in Iraq and recruited more and more insurgents.

The Shiite militias, financed and baked by the Iraqi government and Ali al-Sistani, worked on the sectarian cleansing of Baghdad, and the Sunni insurgents started to react by killing more innocent Shiites. Christians were included in the equation and were forced out of the city. They both succeeded, the Sunnis insurgents and the Shiite militias because more and more Sunnis left Baghdad and more and more educated Shiites left too.

The militias then worked on the second part of the plan: replacing those who left with new residents. So, they brought the uneducated, uncivilized criminals and members of the militias and housed them in the empty houses in Baghdad. Of course, Maliki’s government was aware of this and did not protect people’s properties, although Iraqis and international organizations warned of this. Therefore, the Maliki government was supporting this plan, if not the planner, I believe.

Now, we have a Baghdad that is full of uneducated people who have no jobs and most of them are either criminals or militia members or their families. And the original residents of Baghdad, who did not leave, stay in their houses fearing for their lives and don’t participate in public life.

Then, the government called for the displaced to return to Iraq, but return where? They came back and found their houses takes, their businesses destroyed and they have no place to go.

They changed the makeup of Baghdad and the results are not now, we will see the results in 10 or 15 years, when the new residents of Baghdad are supposed to take over and continue running the place. How are they going to do it with no qualifications? With no education and with no civilization?

The problem is that: Now there is no religious Shiite man or woman that is capable of loving Iraq as is, nor there is a Sunni, because they are all driven by their hate of the others. Shiite and Sunni politicians, who adapt Islam as their constitution, have brought Iraq nothing but devastation.

The Shiite religious government in Iraq now is afraid that if the Sunnis got power, they may rise again. I don’t find this fear as surprising because, as I said before, they are traumatized. They will make anything to insure that the Sunnis don’t get power in Iraq again, which is causing them a lot of backfire. The Sunnis will always be in Iraq and will always seek power. The best way to do it is to share, which is what they promised before they came to Iraq anyway!

And now, to insure Sunnis don't get power in Iraq, Maliki is making another mistake by not allowing the Awakening councils into the Iraqi security forces. It will definitely backfire on him and his government. But fortunately, the Bush administration is now convinced that the Sunnis should be given space in Iraq’s government. And with the pressure from the U.S., he will have to say yes. But here is what I think will happen:

The government will announce that members of the Awakening councils will be allowed into the Iraqi security forces. Then, the government will direct them to registration centers. Then, we will read stories about Awakening councils registration centers being blown up and attacked by car bombs and IEDs and suicide bombers. This will terrify the rest and there will be no Awakening councils members in the Iraqi security forces. And that will be another success for Nouri al-Maliki, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, Harith al-Dhari and Usama Bin Laden.

Therefore, I believe, and time will prove me right again, that whether it is a Shiite or a Sunni government, Iraq will be a failed state if it has an Islamic government. There is no choice for Iraqis but a secular government. A government where Sistani is nothing but a religious figure and limited to that, and Harith al-Dhari is nothing but a criminal and is serving his time in jail.

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

NOTE: Ali has posted a new entry.

Politics Talk!

2007-12-18T20:46:00.000-08:00

The Iraqi government is proving, once again, that it is everything but what the Bush administration hoped it would be. It is now sabotaging what the Americans have achieved and are trying to do to help improve the situation in Iraq:

After spending millions of dollars and months of strategy making and information gathering, the U.S. Army and Marines in Iraq succeeded to win the former insurgents to their sides [which is in fact the Iraqis side] and turned them against al-Qaeda and terrorists in Iraq. They are called al-Sahwa councils.

Now, the Americans are trying to convince the Iraqi government to include those groups into the Iraqi security forces, but the Iraqi government said no!

The Iraqi government’s argument is that no one who caused the death of Iraqis should be in the Iraqi forces!

My argument would be: What about the Shiite militias, like Bard troops and al-Mehdi army? Didn’t Ibrahim al-Jaafari start to include them in the Iraqi police and army in May 2005? And didn’t Maliki authorize 18,000 Shiite militia members to join the police and army just less than a month ago? And what about the pesh merga? Weren’t they militias and now they are considered part of the Iraqi security forces?

On another subject, reporters are now changing their tone when they talk about the situation in Baghdad. As we all noticed, in the last two months, and maybe three, news outlets have been talking about how Baghdad is “safe” and how the security situation is improving, which led to the return of thousands of Iraqis from Syria to Baghdad, or that’s what they claimed.

The Iraqi government did its best to advertise the return of many Iraqis to Baghdad, but did not explain why they returned. The government provided buses to those who were “willing” to return. And the press, especially the American press, served as the advertising company for the Iraqi government and published stories and aired shows talking about the return of some families, encouraged by the “safety and improving situation” in Baghdad.

I, and many other informed Iraqi bloggers, wrote about this misleading, in which the American media played a vital role. And we warned that the return of some Iraqis is not because of the “improving situation,” but because their visas expired in Syria and they were kicked out of the country, or they spent all their savings and cannot stay there. So, we said that the Iraqis were forced to go back and did not choose to.

Did reporters ask why only the Iraqis who fled to Syria were going back before they wrote their misleading stories? No.

I can tell you why:

The Iraqis who left to Jordan were the early ones to leave Iraq because they were able to afford it. Jordan is a very expensive place and therefore only the high class and upper middle class Iraqis could go there and afford to live without the need to work. And those who were not as wealthy were able to find jobs in the early days of the migration in late 2003. And because they arrived to Jordan that early, they were able to get permanent residencies, before the Jordanian government decided that they’ve sucked enough oil and money from Iraq and decided to stop issuing visas to Iraqis.

After that, everyone wanted to leave because the situation became unbearable in Iraq, but most of them did not have the financial ability to live in Jordan and because the Jordanians stopped giving Iraqis residencies. So, the best second choice was Syria. Syria is cheap and was open to host Iraqis. So, all the Iraqis who moved to Syria were middle class and working class people, who were only able to live outside Iraq for a while, spending their savings.

But then they run out of money and their visas expired. The Syrians don’t extend the visas and there are no jobs for Iraqis. What is the solution? Go back to Iraq.

And now, everything is clear to the “brilliant” reporters at the New York Times and The Washington Post. Finally, they realized what we’ve said proved to be right.

Most returnees came back to find themselves homeless. They lost their houses to strangers backed by militias or insurgents. They lost their jobs and now are living with relatives.

The Washington Post reported yesterday:

Many have run out of money and options in Syria, Jordan and other Arab countries, all of which have recently intensified efforts to evict Iraqi refugees. Others have exhausted the patience and resources of family and friends. Lured by reports of security improvements and encouraged by a government eager to demonstrate normalcy, they have started to trickle back over the past two months.

“It's very easy to say, ‘Come home,’ ” the reporter quoted Guy Siri, the U.N. deputy humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, as saying. He added: “But come home where, and how? It's much more complex than that. You have to look at the whole environment, how the community will accept them, whether it's economically viable. There's a whole lot of thinking on the government side to be done.”

And the Iraqi government is doing absolutely nothing. It promised to bring back the returnees to their homes, and it did not. Foreign reporters and U.S. administration only focused on the return and the promises, but they did not do the most obvious step of writing a story: a follow up story!

The government also promised financial aid for those who returned so they can start their lives over, but it did not deliver any help.

I and other Iraqi bloggers talked about the sectarian carving of Baghdad’s neighborhoods and said that it was the reason why the number of people killed in the city is low. I specifically said:

Sunnis cannot go to Shiite neighborhoods and Shiites cannot go to Sunni neighborhoods. Therefore, there are not as many targets in the streets like before. And that’s why you think that the number of people killed in the streets is less and violence has decreased.

But I was cursed!

Now, here is an American saying the same thing:

“There is an element of the violence being down because segregation has already happened,” Col. William E. Rapp, a senior aide to Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said in the Post’s story. “The violence is still at the fault lines, and we're sitting on those fault lines.”

The UN, along with U.S. officials in Iraq, asked the Iraqis government to hold the free bus rides from Syria to Baghdad.

Now you believe?

Something else:

Even the government of Kurdistan, which was always secular and had nothing to do with political Islam, is changing its strategy and is going backwards. After giving up on real politics and professional negotiations, Prime Minister of Kurdistan, Nejervan Barzani, appealed to Ali al-Sistani, the top Shiite cleric, to help him settle the issue of Kirkuk.

Is that what we sacrificed for and are calling for; Iraq where turbaned snakes govern and Islamic laws and rules from 1500 years ago tell me how to live and eat and drink? Because that's where Iraq is heading and it seems that Nouri al-Maliki and Usama bin Laden have succeeded!

… And Omar Welcome You to Our House!

2007-12-03T22:24:00.000-08:00

From time to time, I write a post about a personal experience, if I find it appropriate and interesting to the readers in a way that involves a cultural learning or differences.

Today, I want to tell you about my Thanksgiving trip.

This year, I went to Orange County, where one of my American families live. I know this family for some time now. They are my close friend’s in-laws. Although it sounds like they are not very close to me, but they are. They are some of the best people that I’ve ever met-- true Americans, as I like to say.

It is very interesting how all the cultural differences and backgrounds suddenly melt away just because people want to understand each other. I am a Muslim and they are Jewish.

They picked me up from the airport, although they had a lot to do that day. When I arrived to the house, I was welcomed as a family member. Everyone was waiting for me, not in a formal way. But they all were expecting me to come because I am one of them, or so I strongly felt.

What I like to share with you from Thanksgiving Day is how the owner of the house, whom I will call “Mr. Father” greeted the visitors. More than 25 people were invited to dinner that day.

Once it’s dinner time, we took our seats around the tables, which were beautifully decorated with centerpieces of banana leaves and roses. And Mr. Father shushed us all to greet everybody and toast:

“I, Ellen, ---, ---, ---, ---, and Omar and grandma welcome you to our house and wish you a happy Thanksgiving,” he said.

I was only listening when he said the words, I wasn’t looking at him or anybody else. But once I heard my name, I was suddenly overwhelmed with conflicting emotions. I didn’t know what to do: happy because this wonderful man considers me as one of the family, or sad because I am not with my immediate family, or proud because that’s how much they like me, or whatever. I was certainly feeling all these emotions in one second and a split.

I looked at Mr. Father, who looked blurry to me because of the shy tears in my eyes, and saw a big smile on his face as if saying “yes, you are one of us.” I looked at my friend, who was holding his wife in both arms, and saw big smiles on their faces, smiles that made me feel very comfortable and happy to be with them. And I looked at the people in the room, and they all smiled and nodded with satisfaction.

I spent the rest of the night laughing and joking with people, sharing funny stories from my time here and from back home.

The next day, the family decided that while everyone is there they should celebrate an early Hanukkah. We had a breakfast and then they lit the menorah. Then came the fun part: they exchanged gifts and I got to watch the happy children as they opened their gifts, and I also watched grownups open their gifts and try them on [mostly clothes.] and then came the surprise, I got gifts too, and holiday cards! [The picture above is of grandma’s card.]

This is my life in the US. I never had a bad experience with people. I’ve been to north, south, east and west in this country and have never encountered problems with people. Wherever I go, people are nice, welcoming, generous and understanding. Even those who I disagreed with over different issue, not necessarily Iraq, were always polite.

While we are talking about Thanksgiving, let me share with you a few lines from a 1500-word piece I wrote last year after I spent Thanksgiving with another friend’s family in Vermont.

It was nine in the morning the next day when I woke up humming the words of the Iraqi national anthem. I don’t know when I started, but I thought I was dreaming when I heard the tone to which I hummed. But it wasn’t a dream.

Because Bassam and I weren’t up yet, Jon played the Iraqi anthem on the flute right outside the door. He thought it would be a nice way to wake up on the sound of the Iraqi anthem. It wasn’t only nice, it was great and perfect. Everything was perfect in this trip.

It was Thanksgiving Day. It was a great day. The sun was up and the fields around the house were marvelous. I couldn’t see the place the night before because it was dark. It is a piece of heaven, I thought. I argued with Bassam that God cannot make better than such a place to call heaven. It was perfect: nice weather, clean air, quiet surroundings, water sparkled in springs, birds chirping and us having fun.

My job was to light the candles in the chandelier in the big room, which was built in the late 1700s and is centered by a giant square dining table. [the tradition in this house is that Jon’s father gets to light the candles. But this year, he said, he will make an exception and asked me to do it to show me how much he is happy that we are here.]

We were about 20 people around the table, but there was space for more.

“I’m most happy when we have company,” Jon’s father said as he offered the toast. “You can all come back anytime. This is permanent.”

I looked at the people around me, they were happy. I was happy too. It was loud and that was perfect to hum some Iraqi songs.

“Eid [Arabic for feast] and love tonight and people are celebrating,” I sang. “If you were with me, it would be twice as happy.” I pictured my family as I sang.

This is the kind of experience I am having in the States. How can I not love this country and its people? How can I not push for better relations and great friendship between Iraq and the United States when I am an Iraqi politician in the future?

Therefore, when it was my turn to say what I am thankful for this year, I said: “I don’t want to sound political, but I am thankful for this nation because it gave me a chance to live. It gave me people like you, who I consider family and it gave me this moment when I heard my name said as part of this family.”

I want to add now that “this nation gave me a home, when my home rejected me.”

Feeh

Note: Ali has written a piece too and there is a new piece by Yasmie on the Visiting Writers site.

Why Don't You Go Then!

2007-11-21T10:37:00.000-08:00

I was following the news about the “improved security” in Baghdad over the last two weeks. I wanted to give myself some time to absorb what is being said and make sure I understand what they are talking about. I also have been talking with family and friends in Baghdad to get a bigger picture.

I have to say, I am losing faith in journalism every day!

My parents, who live in a Sunni neighborhood, tell me that “we cannot leave our neighborhood because if we do we will end up in a Shiite neighborhood and be killed, like what happened to many others>

Many of my friends tell me that “it is all either Shiites or Sunnis now. If you mix, you get killed.”

Is this the “improved security” now?

Today, the TimesOnline said “Iraqi refugees are returning home in dramatic numbers, concluding that security in Baghdad has been transformed.”

Did they go to the Syrian embassy in Iraq and see if Iraqis can get a visa? Did they go to Syria and see if the Iraqis can extend their visas? They did mention that it is difficult to extend the residency, but they insisted that most of the Iraqis are retuning because it is “safe” in Iraq now.

More than a month ago, Syria announced that it was going to facilitate the process of Iraqis entering the country and will require $50 for each visitor. What the American and British media didn’t tell you is that that announcement was a lie. What happened is that Syria continued to deport Iraqis and the $50 was a fee for those who already have residencies and want to leave the country and come back. They have to pay $50 each! Did you know about that?

The Washington Post has been talking about the “improved security” in Baghdad for weeks now. But I wonder why they have at least two Iraqi reporters’ names at the end of every article as contributors! Why cannot the American reporters go out and report this “improved security?”

The New York Times usually takes a short cut and doesn’t give contribution to the enormous work their Iraqi reporters do to make writing a story possible and that’s why yesterday they ran a front page story about the “improved security” in Baghdad. I am sure at least 60% of the work was done by Iraqi reporters because the Americans cannot go out and report in the street!

Baghdad neighborhoods are sealed, barbed wires, Jersey walls, sand bags and other obstacles greet the Baghdadis when they leave their houses, if they do.

Women have to wear headscarf outside the house. Women cannot drive. Men cannot wear shorts. Men cannot walk with women in the street, unless they are relative of some kind. Kids don’t go to schools because they fear to be kidnapped. Employees don’t go to their work for fear of assassinations.

Is this “improved security?”

The power in Iraq now is the Mehdi Army and Badr troops. The decision maker is Ali al-Sistani. The Prime Minister vetos any law to bring any minister from his party or his alliance to justice for corruption. The Iraqis tell the prime minister that militias are killing their sons and daughters, and he says “no militias should be allowed to work in the streets,” and at the same time, he adds 18,000 militia members to the police force [2 weeks ago.]

Is this “improved security?”

Here is a report from today’s Reuters
MOSUL - A truck bomb exploded near the house of a tribal leader, killing one person and wounding three others in Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. The leader, a member of a local tribal council overseeing neighbourhood policing efforts, was not at his home at the time.

BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier and an Iraqi interpreter were killed when a roadside bomb detonated near their patrol in eastern Baghdad on Tuesday, the U.S. military said. Three U.S. soldiers were wounded.

BAGHDAD - U.S. forces killed six suspected insurgents and detained 10 others during operations targeting al Qaeda in central and northern Iraq on Tuesday and Wednesday, the U.S. military said.

DIWANIYA - Police arrested 30 people, accused of assassinations and other attacks against Iraqi security forces, in the city of Diwaniya, 180 km (110 miles) south of Baghdad, over the past 48 hours, police said.

RAMADI - At least six people were killed when a car exploded outside a courthouse being guarded by police in the city of Ramadi, 110 km (70 miles) west of Baghdad, one police officer said. Another police source put the death toll at four, with 15 wounded.

BAGHDAD - Three policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their patrol in Mansour district of western Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Iraqi security forces found at least nine bodies in different areas of Baghdad, Iraqi army and police said. Six of the decomposed corpses were buried in the gardens of two abandoned houses in the Saidiya district of southern Baghdad.

LONDON - Two British military personnel were killed in Iraq on Tuesday when their Puma helicopter crashed near Baghdad, the Ministry of Defence said. The ministry said it was too early to speculate on the cause of the crash.

Here is more

BAGHDAD (AP) — Police in Iraq say at least six people are dead after a suicide car bomb exploded at a police checkpoint guarding a courthouse in Anbar province.

Is this “improved security?”

We need to realize that what is happening in Baghdad now is not an improved security situation. What is happening now is the result of violence. Baghdad is carved into sectarian neighborhoods now; Shiite and Sunni neighborhoods. Sunnis cannot go to Shiite neighborhoods and Shiites cannot go to Sunni neighborhoods. Therefore, there are not as many targets in the streets like before. And that’s why you think that the number of people killed in the streets is less and violence has decreased.

What Maliki wanted, which is a sectarian Baghdad ran by his militias, is achieved. He and his poisonous Mullahs, like Sistani, Hakim and Jaafari, wanted to force out the Sunnis and create a Shiite Baghdad. On the other hand, Hareth al-Dhari and his criminals wouldn’t let this happen, so they insisted to stay. The result is hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed. And now, a sectarian Baghdad.

If I live in Baghdad now, I need to stay in my neighborhood. How do I go to work? How do I shop? How do I see my friends? How do I live?

The Sunni neighborhoods are controlled by Sunni insurgents and they are supposed to tell me where to go and where not toand whether I can drive my car in the street or not! And the Shiite neighborhoods are controlled by Shiite militias, Sistani worshippers, and they are supposed to prevent me from going into the neighborhood where I was born and lived for 12 years, Kadhimiya, because it is a Shiite neighborhood and I carry a Sunni first name!

Is this “improved security?”

When Treasure of Baghdad wrote about the miserable security situation in Iraq a few days ago, everyone jumped off their seats and attacked him for saying the truth. Many of the attackers told him that he was lying because “everyone is saying the situation has improved” but him. They told him that people are walking in the streets and living a normal life. They told him to go back to Iraq and see for himself that he was “lying.”

I now invite those deceived [or maybe just mad] people to go to Iraq and tell us what they see. If they do believe that Iraq is “safe” now, why don’t they go and tell us what happens? One of them is a bloger who claims to be Iraqi and knows everything about Iraq, more than Treasure of Baghdad and I do, although he left Iraq more than 25 years ago and was never back since. Now, I invite him to go to Iraq and live “normal life” with his relatives and report from there!

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

I Knew It!

2007-11-05T20:08:00.000-08:00

The game is going as planned!

Now, they are saying that PKK members are leaving Iraq and going to Iran to hide from the Turkish military forces!

“The PKK has decreased its forces in Iraqi Kurdistan and they are moving to Iran,” Othman Ocalan, brother of imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, told The Independent. “It is part of PKK tactics that when they feel pressure in one country, they move to another.”

Now, Turkey has no legitimate reason to go into Iraq with major force to rout the PKK out because they are retreating into Iran.

Is Turkey going after them inside Iran?
There is no way Turkey is going to wave the card of “invasion” in Iran’s face. Then, my next question would be: “So, PKK members threaten the Turkish national security when they are in Iraq, but they don’t when they are in Iran?”

Now, the Turkish, Iraqi and American governments have passed three different messages to the Iraqi Kurds, separately.

Turkish message was: We have the force to destroy your stability. We can use it when we want, especially when you are alone.

U.S. message was: We are not going to protect you against Turkey, our NATO ally. You have to find someone else to back you up.

The Iraqi government message was: Well, that’s what’s going to happen when you are on your own. Are you still thinking about having your own separate state?

On Saturday, the Iranian government presented a plan to help Iraq go out of the security bottle-neck. One of the suggestions Iran put in the plan is to delay the work on Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution for at least two years! [Article 140 is the one that demands “normalization and census and concludes with a referendum in Kirkuk and other disputed territories to determine the will of their citizens by a date not to exceed the 31st of December 2007.”

Are you able to connect the dots now?

Although it is a clear and loud intervention in Iraq’s interior affairs, Nouri al-Maliki and his henchmen have not opposed it yet and did not object on the intervention. [Why should they when Maliki is publicly working on the Iranization of Iraq.]

On a different issue, but still in the same horrific situation of Iraq, the Iraqi Red Crescent, or IRC, in a statement announced that the number of the displaced within Iraq reached 2.3 million Iraqis, a 16% increase from last month.

IRC statement also talked about the false promises Maliki’s government ahs given the Iraqis before when it promised to bring back the displaced to their houses when it is safe for them to do so. Although the Iraqi government’s propaganda, backed by every major American media outlet, is working very well on faking the success of the “surge” in Iraq, the displaced have not been able to return to their homes.

IRC also talked about the $25 million Maliki said that the Iraqi government was giving to help Iraqi refugees outside Iraq. the statement said although Maliki announced it months ago, nothing has been given yet. But I am sure the money left the government’s account, it just did not go where it was supposed to go!

Ali has also published a very interesting post about Iraqi and American cultures meeting where he lives.

Maybe It's Not What We Think!

2007-10-27T21:09:00.000-07:00

I have a totally different way to look at the Turkish threats to invade Iraq, and analyze them. I don’t know why I cannot take things for granted and have to dig deeper.

Why now?

The Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, or PKK, has been based in Iraq for a long time. Why only now Turkey wants to put an end to its existence? Because they’ve attacked Turkish troops and killed a bunch of them? No, because that happened before, even before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. In the armed conflict in the early 1980s, about 40,000 people were killed from both sides, Turkish and the PKK.

There is no way Turkey is going to actually invade Iraq. We have to remember that Turkey is a member of the NATO and it is not in its best interests to upset the U.S. So, unless they get the green light from the United States, which would be another loud international “shame on you” for the Bush administration, they will continue to threat only.

They’ll attack villages? Yes. They’ll bomb places inside Iraq? Yes, because they already have the U.S. blessings to do that. PKK after all is listed as a terrorist organization.

So, why now?

I came up with an answer for that.

Well, first of all: because why not? Iraq is opened to the public! Whoever wants to invade can simply spare a few tanks, a dozen attack helicopters and a couple thousand soldiers, especially when the U.S. troops are busy figuring out how to escape Iraq.

Who is going to defend the country against any other invasion? Iraq doesn’t have an army [and for those who are trying to play words game, I will add “qualified” before the word army.] And the U.S. Army is not going to fight with the Turks to protect Iraq. It is just plain impossible.

Then I thought about it from a political point of view:

Remember what Masoud Barzani, President of Kurdistan region and the leader of Kurdistan Democratic Party, said two months ago about the issue of Kirkuk on the U.S. funded al-Hurrah TV? He said: “If they don’t solve it, then all the options are possible… if they don’t work on article 140 of the constitution, there will be a real civil war.”

That was when everyone understood that Barzani was actually sending a direct threat to the Iraqi government and Arab Iraqis, now that they have no real power to defend themselves.

By “they” he meant the Iraqi government. And article 140 is the one that demands “normalization and census and concludes with a referendum in Kirkuk and other disputed territories to determine the will of their citizens by a date not to exceed the 31st of December 2007.”

I cannot see the Iraqi politicians, who are fighting each other on daily basis, dealing with or solving the issue of Kirkuk. The Maliki government has not paved one street in all over Iraq since it came to power early 2006!

Also, in early 2006, Barzani was asked on Arabiya TV whether he had said before that he wanted Kurdistan to be a separate states, he said: “I was asked if there were a civil war between the Shiites and Sunnis what will we do, my answer was ‘we will separate.’ … Independence is the Kurdish nation’s legitimate right like it is of any other nation.”

Therefore, given that there is a civil war in Iraq, Barzani has in fact started to act as if he is governing an independent state. First with refusing to raise the Iraqi flag, and then the Kurdish authorities prevented Arab families from entering Kurdistan unless they have a Kurdish sponsor. Now, if any Arab family wants to live in Kurdistan, they have to get residency. In fact, if you want to go to Kurdistan, you can get a Kurdistan visa that is different from the Iraqi one!

Then comes the oil law. Before even the Iraqi parliament discussed it [it hasn’t passed yet] the Kurdish parliament passed it and activated it. They have signed contracts with foreign companies.

There are huge numbers of Kurds in Syria, turkey and Iran. If the Iraqi Kurds succeeded to separate and get their own state, why not the others? Is that another enormous problem in the region or what! Can you imagine the size and depth of such a conflict?

Why do you think on October 17, Bashar al-Assad of Syria intervened in the discussions and said “We support the decisions the Turkish government has put on its agenda against terrorism and terrorist activities. We see this as Turkey's legitimate right." ?

So, if the Iraqi government cannot stop the civil war, which the Kurds are afraid of, and cannot solve the issue of Kirkuk, which is what the Kurds want, how do we stop the Kurds from strengthening their independence?

Keep them busy!

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

2007-10-16T23:05:00.000-07:00

First of all, I am so sorry for the delay in writing a new post. I don’t know what happened! I just lost the words for a while. I really wasn’t able to write one paragraph.

I heard a very disturbing report today on Radio Sawa on the Iraqi-Turkey issue. As the Turks are preparing to invade Iraq [why not if everyone has an army can, and if there is no Iraqi government and military forces to defend the country] they have been sending messages to the American administration saying that no one can stop them if they wanted to go ahead and kill hundreds more of civilian Iraqis in their pursue of Turkish rebellions in northern Iraq.

But what drew my attention [because very rarely nowadays something draws my attention in the news from Iraq] is an interview with one of the Iraqi deputy ministers of Foreign Affair in which he said that the security agreement that was signed lately by Iraq and Turkey had different text in Arabic than the one in Turkish!

“This is the main issue of the agreement, but the Arabic version says that a condition for the Turkish forces to enter Iraq is to get a permission from the Iraqi government,” the deputy minister said. “But the Turkish version says that the Turkis forces enters Iraq and then tells the Iraqi government. They just have to tell, not take permission from the Iraqi government.”

Still, the Iraqi government signed the agreement!

What is a stronger evidence that Iraq is a failed state that this? If we have a government that doesn’t read the agreements it signs, and doesn’t provide security to its people, and doesn’t provide food to its people, and doesn’t maintain the infrastructure in the whole country, and doesn’t realize that it is mid October and schools have not opened yet, what kind of a government is that?

The Kurds have signed contracts with foreign companies to invest in the oil resources in northern Iraq before the Oil Law is even discussed in the Iraqi parliament.

From Reuters today:

"There are a lot of minors coming from Iraq to Sweden now," said Swedish Red Cross refugee expert Dick Clomen. "A lot of them are not truly unaccompanied -- they travel with other people -- but they have no legal guardians. They suffer from being away from their families, lack of role models, psychological trauma which must be dealt with."

"I last saw my family two years ago,” 16-year-old Said told Reuters through a translator at a centre for Iraqi underage refugees on the outskirts of Stockholm. “They are happy because I am away from death."

What kind of a government is Maliki’s if the youth are fleeing the country? What are the seeds of the future of Iraq?

The political parties are fighting still since April 2003. The Shiite politicians and turbaned snakes are fighting each other [although some of you were deceived by the latest announcement that Hakim and Sadr had signed an agreement to worked together, I want to remind you that this is the third time they sign this agreement over the last four years!] and the Sunni politicians don’t want to reconcile with the Shiite politicians and also the Shiite politicians will never reconcile with their Sunni rivals obviously. The Kurds basically don’t care what happens west and south of their borders. I am not just saying these things, I have four years of failed politics to support what I am saying.

Now, if there are more than four million Iraqis displaced within and outside Iraq, if the youth don’t like the government and the older don’t and the elderly don’t, as polls are telling us, why is Maliki still in power? And why do we blame Saddam Hussein for staying in power although people did not want him? And why did not we want Saddam Hussein and we are not doing anything to get rid of Maliki?

Why doesn’t the world see the malfunction of the Iraqi government? Seriously!

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

Progress: Not Only Cholera, But Scabies Too!

2007-09-25T00:08:00.000-07:00

From yesterday's Azzaman Newspaper:

“A health ministry source said yesterday that 15,000 detainees in the ministry of Interior prisons are suffering from Scabies. The disease panicked other detainees in the prisons that lack the basics needed to host human beings. Although the number of the infected is high, the Iraqi authorities did not provide any medical treatment to them. At the same time, the Iraqi authorities have refused requests fro international committees and organizations to visit these prisons and observe to specify what is needed.

The source, who visited some Interior ministry prisons, also said that the prisons authorities and the ministry of Health have not done anything to deal with this problem.”

Talk about progress made in Iraq now! And tell me about qualified people in the government!

Where is the “majority” when this is happening?

Some will say that under Saddam Hussein, the situation was worse in detention facilities. And I will say: So? Wasn’t that the reason why we wanted to be “freed” so we improve the life of all people, including prisoners?

Do you realize where Iraq is heading, or has been heading for a while? It is going down. Chaos, killings, car bombs, civil war, instable government, cholera and now scabies. In a few months, if this did not stop, Iraq will be wiped out of the map. It will be only a black hole on the planet.

15,000 persons with scabies! This is 15,000 lives and 15,000 futures. It is 15,000 families that were killed before they were born.

Do you realize the size of this catastrophe? We are in the 21 century for crying out loud and it is Iraq! It was until very recently the most powerful, most educated and most liberal country in the Middle East.

Where is the people that were voted into the government? Where are the followers of Sistani and Harith al-Dhari who vowed to serve the Iraqi nation?

Maliki and Talbani are vacationing in New York and talking to the world about the “progress” they’ve made in Iraq, when dozens of thousands of Iraqis are waiting for death come to their hospital bedsides suffering from cholera, or in prisons suffering from scabies.

How much longer do we have to wait and how many more Iraqis have to die and how much louder we have to cry for the world to realize that this Maliki’s government, the sectarian government and the government that was formed by giving shares to exiles who don’t care about Iraq and their only interest is to sink it more, is not working. That this government has failed since day one. That this government is not going to work?

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

They are traumatized!

2007-09-21T23:38:00.000-07:00

Many comments on this blog talk about how Shiites now have power in Iraq and how that should be a great model for other countries, not to bring Shiites to government but to let the majority in the lead. I don’t disagree with this theory, but I do have many concerns.

Let’s look at Iraq: After the invasion in 2003 the “Shiites” came to power. And I put the word Shiites between quotation marks because I don’t believe the Shiites who are in the government now represent any faction of Iraqis.

Who is in power? Absul Aziz al-Hakim, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, Nouri al-Maliki, Muqtada al-Sadr, Hussein al-Shehristani and others. Does anyone of them represent Iraqis on a wide range?

What did the Iraqi Shiites, or “the majority” as they like to be called now, get from this government? Even something as minor as renovating the Askariya shrine that was bombed in February 2006 did not happen. What kind of developments did the Shiite south get so far?

We have witnessed two Shiite governments in Iraq since the invasion in 2003. What good did that bring Iraq?

The political leaders in Iraq now are Shiites by name only, but they don’t care about Iraq or Iraqis, obviously. They are all traumatized; they were forced to leave the country decades ago, many of their family members were killed by the baathist regime in Iraq. Hakim alone lost more than 60 relatives to the baathist government. Dawa party was banned and anyone with links to it was killed or forced out of the country.

That is the background our current leaders came with. Did it ever occur to anyone that the current leaders of Iraq are traumatized to the bone and such background doesn’t qualify people to be decision makers?

How can someone with a history of sorrows and agonies like Hakim be trusted to govern Iraq? He has all this hatred in his heart, understandably, and the only thought he has in mind is to take revenge. Not only by ordering his Badr “organization” to kill Sunnis everywhere and for no guilt of theirs, but also by turning a deaf ear and blind eye on the corruption of the government. Why should he care? This is the country that killed his relatives and sent him to exile for years and years.

This may sound harsh, but it is the truth, I believe.

Dawa party is leading Iraq now?! Are you kidding me! This party lost thousands of people to Saddam Hussein’s government and its followers will never forget the ugly campaigns the former regime launched against them. Does that mean they have a right to be the ruling power in Iraq now? NO. It means they should be allowed to participate in the government if they want. But it is not a must that the Prime Minister of Iraq is from Dawa party, which is the condition now in the political mayhem there.

They are all traumatized. They need help, not positions.

What did we expect when we allowed relatives of those who were killed by Saddam Hussein to assume power? Many people believe in the myth that Saddam Hussein favored Sunnis over others in Iraq and that all Sunnis were exempt from his torture, how do you want this traumatized group of exiles to treat Sunnis? And how do you want the Sunnis to react to what is happening to them in Iraq now?

I have a relative who worked as the manager of the financial department of one of the ministries for at least two decades. She was never a baathist and that got her in trouble several times, but the minister at the time liked her work and defended her. She was known for her honesty and diligence. But a few months after her ministry was taken by one of the Shiite groups, the minister approached her and said “frankly, we love your work and know that you have a great reputation, but now is the time of Shiites. I have to let you go.”

I never joined baath party, Dawa party, Hakim’s party or Sadr group. Does that mean I am not Iraqi and don’t have the right to be in a leading position in the government in the future?

Tell me now, is this the way it should be? Now is the time for Shiites? And what, the Sunnis go die?

Well, the answer according to the current system in Iraq is: Yes it does.

Iraqi Mojo commented on my last entry and said “but the fact is that his top guys were mostly Sunni Arabs. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging that.”

And I wanted to ask him and all those who believe in this theory: And who are the top guys in post-war Iraq governments? Aren’t they only Shiites?

Under Saddam Hussein regime, you had to be favored by Hussein to get a position, and now you have to be favored by Sistani, Hakim and Jaafari to be in the government. Why are we still whining about Hussein’s time then?

“Part of the healing is acknowledging the truth about what happened. It helps us heal,” Iraqi Mojo said. But I ask: heal from what? And how? By phasing out every single Iraqi, who does not identify as a Shiite, and bring in whoever is in the street and fits the word even if they are unqualified? Is that how the new Iraq is going to heal?

What did the average Sunnis do to you and others so you want to heal? And if this is “help” why hasn’t is been working? And why it will definitely not work?

How will it help to keep talking about what Saddam Hussein did, or Zarqawi, or Sadr, or Hakim, or Harith al-Dhari?

The Iraqis need someone to unite them. They need someone to say “OK, hundreds of thousands were killed during Saddam and after him. Let’s forget about that time now and for ever. The best way to honor the dead is to prove that their lives did not go in vein and start building what they spent their lives hoping for, that is an Iraq where people can live together and be able to plan for ten years ahead.”

What we need now is a secular government that cares about renovating the infrastructure more than it cares about spending millions of dollars on religious shrines. We need a government that would build housing units so people can get jobs and places to live and get married and continue the circle of life that has been on hold since 2003. Shrines should always come later, never before human beings and their needs. Sistani and Harith al-Dhari should never be names mentioned when we talk about the government, never. If they want to be religious authority, then give them a rug and ask them to teach people how to pray. That’s what they are good for and that’s what they should be doing.

Don’t you think?

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

Note: Ali published a new entry also. It's interesting.

trick accomplished!

2007-09-10T19:24:00.000-07:00

Most of us, who are interested in what is going on in Iraq, watched live General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker testifying on the situation in Iraq in the Cannon Caucus Room this morning and recommending steps in the path ahead. But I wonder how many people emphasized on the details of the session.

The testimony was not surprising. In fact they did not come up with anything that I haven’t talked about and predicted at least eight months ago, and for that matter many people did, too.

Progress is tangible in Iraq, success is attainable, the Iraqi government is facing challenges, the Iraqi forces are capable of handling the situation on their own or close to, the political parties are about to reconcile, the Iraqis are feeling the progress, less car bombs, less sectarian killings, less bodies in the streets and on and on with this talk, which I assume we are all used to now.

What struck me the most in the whole session was a sentence that was said in the introduction before the general spoke. Tom Lantos, Chairman of House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said that the Iraqi government should know that “the free ride is over.”

What an insult to Iraqis and Americans. You think that a career politician like Lantos would know by now how to choose his words. A “free ride”?

Let’s do the expenses here for a minute:

Hundred of thousands of Iraqis were killed.
About four million Iraqis displaced outside and inside Iraq.
People imprisoned in their homes and cannot leave because it is dangerous to peak over the outside door.
Dozens of bodies found tortured to death every single day in and around Baghdad and in other provinces.
The Iraqi youth have no teachers and professors, they stopped going to schools for fear of being murdered in one way or another, and they have no future.
Thousands of Iraqis lost their jobs in the “new democratic” Iraq and lost every means to provide for their families.
And many other items…

Was it a “free ride?”

Another thought:
Petraeus summarized by saying: “I have recommended a drawdown of the surge forces from Iraq,” starting end of this month. The interesting part is that I am not a politician, not a military man, not a professional political analyst but I was still able to interpret all this happening back in January. Read this post.

Have you noticed the political trick Bush played on the Americans yet?
He sent more than 20,000 more troops to Iraq earlier this year and is going to withdraw them by next July. Then we will be left with the original number of American troops in Iraq after all. So what did he do? Where is the withdrawal that most Americans are asking for?

This was the most awaited report from and on Iraq. What did it add to what we already know or heard about?

And what happens after July 2008?

“It would be premature to make recommendations on the pace of such reductions at this time,” Petraeus said.

Good for you. “Mission accomplished.” Or should I say: trick accomplished?

You can watch video clips from the hearing on CNN

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

Progress in Anbar!

2007-09-03T20:55:00.000-07:00

We "came here today to see with our own eyes the multiple changes that are taking place in Anbar province," President Bush said today during his visit to Iraq. "Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker tell me if the kind of success we are now seeing continues, it will be possible to maintain the same level of security with fewer American forces."

For months now we’ve been hearing about the “success” and “stability” some parts of central Iraq are enjoying due to the “successful” surge that Bush tasked earlier this year. US generals and politicians have been talking about how safe the streets in Fallujah and Ramadi have become. They claim to be able to walk down the streets there with no flack jackets and with minimum security. They even invited Congress members and other influential figures to visit cities in Anbar province to see how “safe” they are.

Although any human being with the smallest working brain would know that this is not true, newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post and Los Angeles Times were tricked into it. I’ve read many stories talking about the “progress” that have been made in Anbar and other places. And that makes me furious because it proves that earlier this year, when I said that we will hear lies about “progress” in Iraq just to prepare for the withdrawal and that no one will care about the Iraqis anymore, I was right.

“We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq,” Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack said in a piece in the New Yok Times five weeks ago. They went to Iraq and spent eight days only, shuttled in armored vehicles when they weren’t flying in black hocks. Eight days… and did they meet Iraqis? NO.

“The first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops,” they said in the third paragraph, which is what we call “the nut graph” that tells the whole point and reason of writing a story. Do you get it?

“Last week we strolled down its streets without body armor,” they said about Ramadi. But did they tell us that it was ONE street only? No. they said “streets.” Did they tell us that this street was blocked four years ago and no car is allowed to move on it? Did they tell us that the street only leads to the US troops barracks, which means average Iraqis don’t use it anymore but to cross from one neighborhood to another? Did they tell us that it was the main street in Ramadi that was the busiest in the city and until it is the busiest again we cannot say it is normal again there?

I don’t get it. How can the Americans be so foolish? Why don’t they ask questions? Why don’t they check the information that is being fed to the?

Don't we still remember the city of Tal Afar in the north? Don’t we remember when Bush called it a “success story” a while ago and since then it’s been the perfect spot for al-Qaeda to stage their car bombs and suicide attacks? It is one of the most powerful evidences of the failure in Iraq.

If it is such a success in Anbar, where are the construction projects? Why don’t we see one factory back to working there? Anbar province houses Iraq’s biggest glass factory. Why isn’t it functioning again? And why we don’t see one single street being cleaned up of the rubble of four years of destruction? And why do we still see cement barriers and barbed wires everywhere?

Even if it is true and Anbar is safe now, should the Iraqi government be making all the efforts to start reconstruction there to make an example for Iraq to follow? How can the Iraqis be motivated if when there is insurgency, they have to suffer, and when there is not they also have to suffer. Why should they help the government to stabilize the country if in both cases the only winners are the Shiite government, Kurdish politicians and Sunni insurgents?

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

For Maliki, Everyone Is A Baathist!

2007-08-28T08:43:00.000-07:00

So, now every one in Iraq is either “baathist”or Saddamist.”

Unless they agree with Nouri al-Maliki and are happy with his continuous failure, they are all terrorists.

It only reminds us of the time when Saddam Hussein used such stupid excuses to kill his rivals. Whenever people disagreed with his policy, he called them “members of the collaborator, Dawa party,” to which Nouri al-Maliki belongs.

Very ironic and disgusting.

Not only Iraqis! He called France “Saddamists.” France as a country. Can you believe it!

Maliki “got to be replaced," Bernard Kouchner, the French minister of Foreign Affairs, told Condi riceafter a short visit to Baghdad. But said that he wasn’t sure ousting Maliki would happen anytime soon “because it seems President Bush is attached to Mr Maliki. But the government is not functioning.”

So, Maliki was furious after he heard that. He even started to think like a tribal leader, not like the leader of Iraq. “After we welcomed him here and opened our doors, although France supported the former regime, and then he attacks our national unity government,” Maliki said in a news conference.

He doesn’t know what to do. Maliki is being attacked by everyone now, but he wouldn’t give up the position. [does it ring a bell!]

Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin also called for Maliki’s removal from the government.

"There are American officials who consider Iraq as if it were one of their villages, for example Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin," Maliki said in the same news conference. "They should come to their senses."

It must be really hard for him to come in one news conference and defend himself and his lame strategy against some of the most powerful countries in the world.

And in the Iraqi Parliament too, some members are talking about replacing Maliki. When Maliki heard about it, he threatened that he has documents showing connections between members of the parliament and terrorist groups or corruption. He said that he was going to present the documents to the parliament when he appears on its floor soon.

He used this strategy before: when the Sunnis were demanding more power about a year ago, he came to the parliament and presented documents that linked some of the Sunni parliament members to insurgency. And that occupied the Sunnis for a while and silenced them.

I wonder how many documents Maliki has to prove connections of every militia in Iraq to his cabinet or to his masters, the turbaned snakes.

Why is Bush still defending Maliki’s failure government is beyond my understanding. Maybe he fears to be called baathist and Saddamist, who knows!

It's become a nasty joke!

2007-08-16T20:47:00.000-07:00

“Iraq's political leaders emerged Thursday from three days of crisis talks with a new alliance that seeks to save the crumbling U.S.-backed government,” the AP reported earlier this morning.

The “new alliance” they are referring to is between the Shiites and Kurds in the Iraqi government.

And I may ask: What’s new about it?

In January 2005, when the political leaders in Iraq were struggling to form a one-year government, the United Iraqi Alliance [Shiite] and the Kurdish coalition, which is made of the two main Kurdish parties the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, announced that they came together to “face the challenges the Iraqi nation is facing,” in Ibrahim Jaafari’s words. In fact, they came together against the Sunnis, as we all saw a few months after that.

The Sunnis at the time boycotted the elections and the government, which made the government pure Shiite and Kurdish.

Then, the Kurdish coalition and the Shiite alliance came together against the Sunnis and the seculars in the elections in December 2005 and “this cooperation and coalition will not be threatened or disrupted by any external pressures,” said Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Shiite alliance at the time. “We will always be together to form a national unity government,” Jalal Talbani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said then.

They came together to face the Sunnis and the seculars and force a Shiite Prime Minster in Iraq. And they succeeded.

Now, they come and form a “new alliance?” and they signed an agreement, again!

The agreement talked about “the necessity of working together to succeed the political process and abide by the political process and the basics of the democratic federal system. To insure the real participation of all the political partners in power and avoid marginalization.”

But the new alliance did not include the Sunnis or the seculars. It just renewed what the Shiites and the Kurds have been doing in the last four years, run a dictatorship.

The Kurds obviously don’t care about what is happening in Iraq because they have their own separate region. Therefore, the real leaders of the rest of Iraq are the Shiites. This is the new “democracy” in Iraq. The Kurds run their region, and the rest is for the Shiites to kill.

I thought the Kurds were calling for a “national unity government.” I thought they made it clear that they were not satisfied with the performance, or lack of it, of Maliki’s government. I really thought something was wrong. Then I noticed something in the agreement:

“And fasten the process of applying article number 140 of the Iraqi constitution.”

Article 140 is the one that calls for the normalization in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and other “disputed areas” and holding a census and referendum in the city that would decide whether Kirkuk to join Kurdistan and be the capital of the region, or stay in the Arabic Iraq.

There you go. It’s all personal interests. Plus, Barzani already enacted the disputed oil law in Kurdistan four days ago without even waiting for the Iraqi parliament to approve it, which is what the constitution demands!

Why every time the Shiite poisonous mullahs claim to be forming a “national unity government” they come out and say “we united with the Kurds?”

Who is counting how many Iraqis have died this year so far? Anybody? Because the government seems to be fine with it and doesn’t have time to discuss the security issue.

You know what’s driving me crazy these days? It is that the world is watching like there is nothing wrong happening in Iraq. It is that the U.S. administration is watching this comedy repeated over and over again and acts like it is not a big deal.

What do we have to say and show to convince people that this government is another dictatorship?

What did we get from this new meeting exactly? I really don’t know. Since January 2005, the Shiites and the Kurds have been united against the rest of Iraq. And today, they announced that they are together against the rest of Iraq. What did I miss?

Apparently, Maliki’s turbaned gang announced it: if you are not Shiite, you don’t get to share power. Only the Kurds are allowed in, and that’s because they are far in the north.

I thought Maliki and Talbani said the meeting of the political leaders this week was aimed at ending tension in the political process and try to find a way to solve the security problems in Iraq. I thought they wanted to form a “national unity government.”

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

Again... and again... and again!

2007-08-13T18:40:00.000-07:00

The Iraqi political leaders met today to create a “national” unity government, again.

This comedy continues, but the Iraqis don’t laugh to it anymore, because it’s become the reason behind the killing of scores of innocents every day.

In early 2005, when Ibrahim al-Jaafari rallied to be the Prime Minister, he called for all the politicians to join him in the efforts to “create a national unity government that serves all Iraqis away from sectarian divisions and ethnic tension.” And during the year he stayed in office, Iraq did never enjoy one day of peace. He empowered the Shiite militias and allowed them to join [not infiltrate as you read in newspapers] the Iraqi security forces, and that’s when the assassinations based on the religious and ethnic identity started. His poor management of the country and ill-intentioned strategy of dealing with the situation in Iraq fueled more Sunni violence and made the division in the Iraqis community even stronger.

And then came al-Maliki, who called for reform in the government and gathered the Kurdish and Sunni politicians around him in what he called “national unity government.” He deliberately ignored the moderate and secular politicians, but no one in the political arena cared, not the Kurds and not the Sunnis because they thought they already got what they wanted. Little they knew that Maliki was going to deny them the power that they killed for, just like he did with the seculars.

Along the past year, when Maliki showed very little cooperation with other factions of the political process and only applied what his Shiite leaders inside Iraq and in Iran ordered him to do, the Sunnis felt the trick. The Kurds did not care that much because they already got Kurdistan, or that’s what they thought.

Then he started to mess up with his own coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance [of Shiites.] He first reclaimed power from those who claim to be independent in the alliance [and I don’t understand how they can be independent if they belong to an alliance!] and then started to support military operations and arrests against Muqtada al-Sadr followers.

Sadr’s people threatened to leave the government; Maliki did not seem to care. Sadr ordered his six ministers in the government to quit, and Maliki said he would decrease the number of ministries in his cabinet to overcome this problem, in a very “democratic” step!

Fadhila party ministers quit.

The Sunnis threatened to quit, Maliki did not seem to care. They quit, he did not seem to care. He decided to run the show with Shiites and Kurds “democratically” in his “national unity government.”

The cabinet lost 15 or 16 of its ministries and Maliki insisted that his government is a “national unity government” and that everyone else is “an outsider influence who want to disrupt the democratic political process in Iraq. Baathihsts and terrorists.”

Then the oil law was put on the table. Maliki opposed it, so it became personal to the Kurds. Only then that the Kurds felt that the government was not a representatives of the Iraqis and that it is not a national unity government. They publicly denounced Maliki’s way of dealing with the situation in Iraq, only after he opposed the law that would serve them the most, the oil law.

Iyad Allwai’s group, the five secular ministers, suspended their participation in the cabinet meetings. And Allawi insisted that his government is a “national unity government.”

Only then, when Maliki did not want to cooperate with the Sunnis and give them more executive power over security issues, and when the Kurds felt threatened by not being able to pass the oil law, and when the Sadr people, Maliki’s main supporters, were arrested and killed by Maliki’s permission, and when Allawi’s people felt that they did not have enough power to actually gain anything from the government, that they felt the government is not a “national unity.”

Over 20,000 innocent Iraqi people killed since Maliki was appointed a Prime Minister did not count and did not give the politicians a clue that it was never a national unity.

Now, they meet again to try to solve the problems. And I don’t know how they will solve them if every one of them wants to stay in his position and would not give up. I don’t know how we can change what is happening in Iraq if Maliki des not want to resign, although every single party in Iraq is asking him to. I don’t know how we can convince the families of the victims of the new democracy in Iraq that what we have is better than Saddam Hussein’s regime, if Dawa party is another bath party but with a different name, with the same crimes though.

What’s even more shameful is that Iran demanded that Iyad Allawi and his groups should not participate in the “national unity” conference. And Maliki could not say a word and Allawi was not invited! And the government did not even try to find excuses or deny the news about the Iranian influence and intervention in Iraqi’s internal issues when it was uncovered in Iraqi and foreign media. The “legitimate sovereign” Iraqi government preferred to be silent.

And what are they going to say in the meeting? I guess: “We decided that every faction of the Iraqi community should have equal opportunity to serve its country. Our brothers and we decided to be one hand to face the challenges facing our beloved country. We will unite our efforts to fight the outsiders, the terrorists, and the Saddamists and baathists who are trying to divide the Iraqis into ethnic and sectarian groups to fuel a civil war. But they will not succeed because this is the new Iraq. The new Iraqi that promotes freedom and democracy and human rights. We will work together to end this violence so our people can enjoy their national unity government.”

Same bullshit we’ve been hearing since Paul Bremer took over from Saddam Hussein.

I don’t know what we are going to tell the Iraqis and the rest of the world when the time for the next elections, 2009, comes and Maliki’s Dawa party decides that “it is not possible to hold elections for security reasons.” What are we going to do if the people in power now never wanted to leave, which seems to be the case now?

What have we done!

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

Nobody cares anymore!

2007-08-05T11:49:00.000-07:00

The situation in Iraq has become so violent and out of control that the government is not even trying to cover it up. And the Iraqis have become such an unwanted breed around the world that the Prime Minister himself felt no shame admitting it that he gave the members of the Iraqi National Team diplomatic passports to reward them for winning the Asian Cup.

The diplomatic passports, or “the red passports” as nicknamed in Iraq, are not disrespected as the regular ones, the green. Because holders of the red passports supposedly represent the Iraqi government, they face less difficulties and don’t waste as much time to get visas.

It is a clear evidence and a huge slap in the face of average Iraqis that the PM goes in public and reward the “Lions of Mesopotamia” by giving them the freedom to travel. What does it mean to give red passports to reward a soccer team? I mean, a reward is to show how grateful a person is, or in this case Iraq is, to its soccer team and that it is trying to give them the maximum appreciation.

But how? By separating the players from the “mob?”

That’s the case in Iraq now. Everyone is looking for the red passports. People exhaust their connections to get one. I know many friends who did everything they could to get jobs with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs just so they can get the diplomatic passports and get a visa to a European country and go to apply for asylum.

The Iraqi Council of Representatives spent days watching TV for news about car bombs, kidnappings, assassinations, bodies found in and around Baghdad and watching reports with numbers of displaced Iraqis increasing by the day, but the elected people’s representatives were busy discussing whether they should issue themselves and their families red passports. And they did, just a week before their “constitutional right” of a month-long vacation. Where are they now? And where are their families?

Did it occur to the Iraqi government that the red passports holders are never coming back to Iraq? Did anyone try to check if the thousands of Iraqi diplomats around the world now are planning to come back to Iraq when their four-year deployment is over, which for hundreds of them is going to be next year? This is a story idea I would love to see developed and published in a newspaper soon. Who is coming back and who isn’t?

A few days ago I had the chance to sit in a room with more than a dozen of democrat Congress members who were discussing the situation in Iraq. For almost two hours, they talked about possible pull out of troops and change the approach that would eventually lead to a withdrawal. No one mentioned the Iraqis at all.

It's become so messy and unorganized that everyone is taking care of themselves, but no one is paying attention that the Iraqis are stuck between the U.S. administration and the Iraqi government on one side and the Sunni insurgency and Shiite militias and other criminals on the other.

Since the invasion, what did the average Iraqis get? I know the parliament members got monthly salaries between $3,000 and $7,000. I know the ministers get monthly salaries of no less than $7,000. I know that most of the diplomats, who came to Iraq after the invasion after decades of “exile,” are living abroad again and when their deployment is over they will go back home, either London or US or Iran or Syria or somewhere else in Europe—like the prime Minister himself.

I also know that the ministers who served under the first Iraqi cabinet in 2004 through early 2005 are outside Iraq now, enjoying the money the inherited from their successor baathists.

But what did my parents, my brothers, my relatives, my friends and 20 million other Iraqis get other than death threats and dark vision of their unknown future?

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

we won, for a change!

2007-07-29T13:34:00.000-07:00

Iraq won the Asian Cup for the first time, beating the three-time champion, Saudi Arabia 1-0. It was also the first time for an Iraqi team to participate in the Asian Cup semifinals in more than 30 years.

It is very rare, if not never, that I get happy notes about Iraq from family and friends. And when it happens, I always think that it is not going to last, because usually something bad or violent happens before we can enjoy the slight happiness and draw a smile on our faces.

This morning, I was walking in the streets of Washington DC when I received this message on my phone: “Mabrook foz el montakab.”

It was from my friend, Ban, who moved from Baghdad to DC a few months ago. The message said “Congratulations on the victory of the soccer team.”

Now, I’m not a soccer fan at all, but the news cheered me up and made my day. Not because we won a cup, but because I know how happy that made many Iraqis. I know my brothers are very very happy now. I know my mother is laughing and my aunts and cousins are laughing and talking about things that are not car bombs and assassinations for a few hours.

A few days ago, when Iraq won the game against South Korea and came to the semifinals, I got a very touching email from my American friend who lives in Egypt now. After she heard about how the Iraqis went to the streets that day and celebrated the victory, she wrote in the email: “It’s just a tiny thing just one little moment but oh god it just made me want to cry. The beautiful, dear, lovely sweet Iraq I love is there and these people are proof of it.”

The email hurt me to the core because I knew the happiness wasn’t going to last. I knew that in a few hours I will read in the wires that scores of Iraqis were killed while celebrating the news. And her email didn’t forget this fact. She added “I know tomorrow will be back to the same old shit but god, at least for a few hours, people were happy. It makes me so happy to imagine them feeling this joy and dancing in the streets even if for just a moment. It also makes me even more determined that we are going back Amouri! We are going back and no one will stop us ok?” [Amouri is my nickname]

A few minutes later, I refreshed the wires window, and there it was “car bombs kill more than 50 Iraqi soccer fans.

Today, I know for sure bombs will end the Iraqis happiness over winning the cup. But to hell with sorrows even just for a few minutes, just one entry. I want to write something happy about Iraq because I am tired of sad news and I am tired of talking about turbaned snakes and politicians.

I actually got emails from friends overseas congratulating me. For once, I felt like a normal citizen of this globe. People emailed me not to talk about the last casualty number or the last development in the idle political process in Iraq, but to say congratulations. Oh people how much I miss this word.

“Hi Champion - Congratulations from Jerusalem!” said one of my friends and professors.

“IRAQ WINS IRAQ WINS IRAQ WINS!!” said the subject of another email from my American friend in Cairo. “Mabruk alayhom!!” the message said, congratulations to them, "it's the best news ever. I hope they are celebrating in the streets again!”

“A million mabrook for the Iraqis,” said my cousin in UAE in a message he sent to dozens of friends and family on Yahoo! Messenger.

“Crowds of ecstatic Iraqis wept tears of joy and fired rifles into the air on Sunday after their soccer team's victory in the Asian Cup triggered the biggest street celebrations since the fall of Saddam Hussein,” Reuters reported.

In Iraq, thousands of people including members of the security forces defied a government ceasefire order to welcome the victory with a barrage of gunfire,” Bloomberg reported.

Ahhhh, it is delicious the taste of happiness.

Congratulations for every Iraqi in and outside Iraq. Let’s have the day off. Let’s not think about bombs and civil war today, these things are always there waiting for us. But today, this hour is precious. Happiness is visiting us. Let’s welcome it.

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

How Can We be So Blind?

2007-07-21T11:44:00.000-07:00

When did the dictatorship return to Iraq?
Why no one is writing about it?
Is it too much of a dark side of the post-war Iraq?
But then what isn’t!

It is not a secret, and definitely not an opinionated judgment, that the Maliki government has failed to deal with the situation in Iraq.

We certainly do realize how much the politician inside and outside the government are facing, but isn’t that why the Iraqis voted for them in the first place; to face the difficulties and bring Iraq to the other end, where there is hope and future? Are they at least trying to help?

Listen to this: The Iraqi Parliament, after long discussions and several days of debates, decided to issue diplomatic passports to its members and their families! Is this what the rest of the 20 million Iraqis inside Iraq and the three to four million displaced citizens are waiting for?

Yes, our lives just got better and we feel much more safer because our representatives in the parliament and their families got diplomatic passports [the red ones] so they can get visas to Europe and apply for asylum. What more a faithful citizen could wish for!

After the elections in December 2005, most of the Iraqis, politicians and average citizens, agreed that former Prime Minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, was a total failure and couldn’t head the new elected government. Therefore, several alternatives were nominated for the post.

The candidates included Adil Abdulmehdi, a leader in the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq [at the time was the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI], Nadeem al-Jabiri, a leader in Fadhila party and Hussein al-Shahristani, an Islamist who claims to be independent.

All the candidates, who had a chance to win, were Shiite Islamists. According to our new constitution of democracy, the Prime Minister should always be nominated by the group that holds the biggest number of seats in the parliament. And that was played really well because, logic says, those groups are the Shiite Islamic groups. [Although I have to say that Abdulmehdi is somehow a moderate, who’s been a communist and a baathist before joining SCIRI in the late 1970s or early 1980s!]

So, now because of the constitution, even if there are Sunnis or Kurds or Christians or any other minorities, who are more qualified for the position, we cannot vote for them to lead our government because the constitution states clearly that the poisonous Mullahs, Ali al-Sistani, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, Jaafari and Sadr, get to choose, and they will never accept a non-Shiite candidate.

Therefore, there were months-long sessions in the parliament and among the political leaders after the elections to decide who should be the new Prime Minister. But Jaffari, who is also the leader of the Islamic Dawa Party, insisted that he should be the Prime Minister, otherwise you are threatening the unity and security of Iraq,” he repeatedly said in public.

Wasn’t that a clear threat to “democracy”? How did we miss that?

Finally, they got to convince Jaafari to accept that number two man in Dawa Party and his deputy, Nouri al-Maliki, who at the time went by the name Jawad al-Maliki, be the PM.

Maliki also was one of the leaders of the Debaathification Committee.

They kept in the family. Didn’t they? And they refused to even think about another candidate.

When there were rumors that some secular politicians were trying to oust Maliki and take over the government, Maliki got all defensive and went on TV and all news outlets threatening that violence will increase and there will be a wide scale civil war in Iraq if the seculars tried to manage a coup d'état. He insisted that his government is “the unity government” even if half the Iraqis don’t want it. He called the seculars “traitors and supported by outsiders” as if he was seated only because the Iraqis wanted him and his protection force is not provided by Black Water.

When there were talks that some Iraqi politicians were trying to convince the U.S. administration to help them replace Maliki with someone else who can actually lead a government, he repeated his threats over and over.

A few weeks ago, when the Sadr group pulled its five ministers from the government and the Sunnis threatened to pull their ministers too to protest the malfunction inside the government and the inability to serve people, Maliki insisted that his government is “the national unity government and is what the people want” and that the ministers are only trying to “disrupt the political and democratic process in Iraq.”

Instead of listening to his ministers points of view and instead of listening to people, he decided to decrease the number of ministries in his cabinet “for the sake of Iraq and to provide better service.” But in fact, the announcement was only to show anyone who disagrees with him and with Dawa party that “if you are not with us, we can replace you. Or even better, we will pretend you didn’t exist!”

How did we miss that? Why no one wrote about his announcement to form a new government with less ministries? That means that he is getting rid of those who oppose him and his party. How did not we call that dictatorship?!

A few weeks ago, most members of the Iraqi Parliament voted to fire the parliament speaker, Mahmood al-Mashhadani. Mashhadani on his turn went on TV and newspapers and threatened that “there will be a civil war in Iraq and the political process will be paralyzed” if they fire him. Even when his own group, the Iraqi Accordance Front, the biggest Sunni group in the government, asked him to retire, he insisted that he is the only one to head the parliament.

They agreed to put him back, although most of the members don’t want him and don’t want to work with him!

The politicians in Iraq think that the inherited their positions from the years “of struggle” against Hussein’s government. They really believe that no one deserves to be a Prime Minster unless he is a member of Dawa Party, or at least a member of the Shiite alliance, because they all spent most of their lives “struggling” against Hussein and his regime in London, Syria, Iran, U.S.A. and other places.

They do believe that the president should be Talbani and the president of Kurdistan should be Masoud Barzani, because they fought against Saddam Hussein, even if Barzani did call Hussein’s republican guards to murder Talbani’s people, fellow Kurds, in the 1990s. They really believe that the parliament speaker should always be Sunni and a member of the Accordance Front, just because they have tries to the insurgents and can fight in the streets.

Are there no other Iraqis who struggled under Hussein’s regime that are qualified to lead Iraq? When did it become a family issue to appoint ministers and leaders in the government?

Is not this what Saddam Hussein did for 25 years or am I mistaken?

We are looking at history repeating itself and no one wants to admit it because it is too harsh. We are so brainwashed that we look at another copy of a baathist government, but renamed, and cheer for it and call it “democracy.”

How don’t we realize that the governing system in Iraq is a dictatorship, when the prime minister and the parliament speaker threaten a civil war if they were replaced, even when most of the government members don’t want them? Is it because their name is not Saddam Hussein and their party in not the Arab Baath Socialist Party?

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki