Author: Carol Watson

Things are getting better in Iraq, right? Riverbend, an Iraqi blogger in Baghdad, comments on this today, March 19th:

It’s like Iraq is suffering from intellectual hemorrhaging. Professors and scientists are being assassinated right and left- decent intelligent people who are necessary for the future of Iraq. Other scientists are being detained by the Americans and questioned about- of all things- Al-Qaeda. It seems like everyone you talk to is keeping their eyes open for a job opportunity outside of the country. Whatever the reason, the brains are slowly seeping out of Iraq. It’s no longer a place for learning or studying or working… it’s a place for wealthy contractors looking to get wealthier, extremists, thieves (of all ranks and origins) and troops… read more

A tribute written by Starhawk for Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall, two young volunteer activists working for freedom and justice with the International Solidarity Movement who were killed by Israeli soldiers.

I am writing this as we approach the anniversary of two murders. And I find myself thinking about an orange, a ghost orange, growing on a branch on a ghost tree that no longer stands in the courtyard of a home crushed to bloodstained rubble. In Rafah, the border town that lies on the dusty frontier where Gaza meets Egypt. A place of cement tenements pockmarked with bullet holes, streets choking in dust and smashed concrete, barbed wire and fences and sniper towers, where Rachel and Tom died, like so many of the Palestinians they had come to stand with in solidarity.

In March of 2003 Rachel Corrie was killed as she was trying to stop an Israeli soldier from demolishing a home. The bulldozer driver saw her, and deliberately ran over her. She was twenty-three years old.

Just a few weeks later, an Israeli soldier firing from a sniper tower shot Tom as he was trying to save some children who were under fire … read more

A few paragraphs in this March 12th entry by Riverbend, a woman blogger in Iraq, caught my eye. It is about four Iraqi men detained by the US military who were able to buy their freedom when their families coughed up $300 payments to the soldiers holding them. I hadn’t realized that we were charging a fee to release detainees from American custody. Is this official military policy, or are these cases of outright extortion? Are the thousands of detainees still held by the US in Iraq merely in prison because they can’t come up with their $300 fee? I realize this story is hearsay but it has somewhat of a ring of truth to it, at least to my ears.

They agreed that one of the soldiers would accompany the man back to the city and wait while he came up with $300/detainee. The rest of the men would be freed a couple of days later. And it worked. Two days later, his three relatives came walking home after being dropped off on the side of the road. Basically, they paid a ransom for their freedom. … read more

I note there is no mention of fees to be paid by a detainee in these requirements for release outlined by Paul Bremer back in January, 2004.

“First, the person released must renounce violence. Second, the person released must have a guarantor, such as a prominent person in his community or a religious or tribal leader who will accept responsibility for the good conduct of the individual being set free.”

Jo Wilding’s commentary while traveling inside Iraq creates a brief but valuable glimpse of what is happening inside the country and how the war has affected the lives of Iraq’s people. Here, the circus performers, traveling past minefields, watch the celebrations in Kurdish Erbil on the signing of Iraq’s interim constitution.

Whatever it means for the rest of Iraq, in Kurdistan the interim constitution was celebrated, giving the Kurds a federal state of their own for the first time ever. Drums announced the coming of the parade, men and boys, the red, white and green of the Kurdish flag, with a many-pointed gold star in the middle, the placard featuring Mustafa Barzani, the murdered Kurdish leader. The Kurds have been stateless people in the empires of others more or less forever, ruled by the Ottomans, the British, the puppets of the British and, until 1991, the Baathists. Winston Churchill authorised the crushing of their demand for an independent state in Kurdistan in the 1920s with poison gas.

Sinan and Selim are studying English at Salahudin University in Erbil. It’s a strange thing, but a lot of Kurdish people are unaware that the weapons they talk about, the weapons Saddam used against them, were sold to him by the UK, the US, Germany, France and so on, paid for with funding granted by the US in the full knowledge of what he was doing to the Kurds. We talked about the war, why it happened. Kurdistan wasn’t the target of much bombing and there are no troops on the streets, no house raids, no detentions without charge, no random shootings. People here know as little about what’s going on in Baghdad and the rest of Iraq as people in Jordan do. It’s another country … read more

Be sure to stop by Jo’s photo gallery as well.

What is the Circus2Iraq? In their own words: “A small group of performers and activists currently in Iraq performing and running circus skills workshops for the kids. People are traumatised, tired and worn down by years of war and sanctions and are still without many basic necessities. We are not aid workers. We think the best thing we can do is bring a bit of colour, a bit of normality, a bit of playfulness and make people smile.” Visit the Circus2Iraq website for more information about this great group of caring people.

They enlisted to defend our nation from attack. Now, they are encamped on the other side of the world as an occupation force with cloudy and confusing goals. Though they did sign on the dotted line voluntarily, with the coming of Bush and the neocons, like the proverbial horse, their job description seems to have been changed in midstream. Here’s Part I of day-to-day life at a hellhole aptly named Firebase Purgatory, Afghanistan:

“Are we [here] to alter a way of life? To stop tribal warfare? Or are we stopping the enemy of our country?” Bergeron asked. It’s difficult to know whether they’re winning or losing, say Triple Deuce soldiers and officers.

“How do you measure disruption?” Cunningham wondered. If coalition soldiers leave, the Taliban and al-Qaida will come back, says 1st Lt. David Hawk, Cunningham’s executive officer. “This country has historically harbored terrorists. There are a million places to hide … and no one to bother you.” In that sense, Purgatory’s an emerging template, the first of dozens of similar stabilization efforts around Afghanistan.

“We’re a cog,” Hawk said, “in a machine that’s going to turn for the next 10 years.”
… read more

In this accompanying article, the soldiers of Firebase Purgatory offer some tips on how to make life more tolerable until they can go home. One carries:

In the left breast pocket of his shirt a complete packet of memories, including photographs of his mother, brother and sister, soil from the front yard of his boyhood home in Harrisburg, Pa., and even a little Bible his grandmother received when she graduated nursery school.

Another, on a more practical level:

“You gotta bring baby wipes,” he added. “One, to bathe with. Two, for other ‘sanitary needs’ because the toilet paper in MREs is no good.”
… read more

It’s not only soldiers who suffer from PTSD, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which used to be called “battle fatigue,” but anyone who has ever experienced first-hand the terrors of warfare or tragedies of horrific proportion is just as susceptible. In her journal, about halfway down the page, Jo Wilding speaks of the children of Iraq and the psychological damage done to them by this war. Juvenile PSTD is considered to be of such magnitude in the health and well-being of American children that school counselors and psychologists rush into the classrooms when a classmate tragically dies, even as a result of an automobile accident. And yet, in Iraq, the children of war are almost forgotten victims.

The doctors believe there is not a single child in Iraq who isn’t suffering some degree of post traumatic stress, with a wide variety of symptoms. There is virtually no awareness about the disorder and its symptoms, so bed wetting, for example, is a source of shame rather than a warning signal that the child needs help. Parents are in denial, Dr Yousef says, because of the stigma attached to any kind of mental illness. “Parents think that people will think there’s something wrong with the child’s mind and say maybe he inherited it from me.”

The doctors believe that play therapy is the best, perhaps the only, way of diagnosing and rehabilitating kids with PTSD but there are no trainers in Iraq. “There are less than a hundred psychiatrists in Iraq, but more than three hundred Iraqi psychiatrists in the UK.”… read more