[Mb-civic] Baghdad report: Farnaz Fassihi, Wall Street Journal 29 September 2004

[Kevin Walz]

9/29/2004 2:58:10 PM

From: [Wall Street Journal reporter] Farnaz Fassihi
Subject: From Baghdad

Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under 
virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this 
job: a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in 
far away lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a 
difference.

Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq has defied all those 
reasons. I am house bound. I leave when I have a very good reason to  
and a scheduled interview. I avoid going to people's homes and never  
walk in the streets. I can't go grocery shopping any more, can't eat in 
restaurants, can't strike a conversation with strangers, can't look for 
stories, can't drive in any thing but a full armored car, can't go to 
scenes of breaking news stories, can't be stuck in traffic, can't speak 
English outside, can't take a road trip, can't say I'm an American, 
can't linger at checkpoints, can't be curious about what people are 
saying, doing, feeling. And can't and can't. There has been one too 
many close calls, including a car bomb so near our house that it blew 
out all the windows. So now my most pressing concern every day is not 
to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our Iraqi 
employees stay alive. In  Baghdad I am a security personnel first, a 
reporter second.

It's hard to pinpoint when the 'turning point' exactly began. Was it  
April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it 
when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was 
it when  Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq's population, became a 
nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the 
insurgency began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle 
to include most of Iraq? Despite President Bush's rosy assessments, 
Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a 'potential' threat, 
under the Americans it has been transformed to 'imminent and active 
threat,' a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for 
decades to come.

Iraqis like to call this mess 'the situation.' When asked 'how are 
thing?' they reply: 'the situation is very bad."

What they mean by situation is this: the Iraqi government doesn't  
control most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each 
day around the country killing and injuring scores of innocent 
people, the country's roads are becoming impassable and littered by 
hundreds of landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill American 
soldiers, there are assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The 
situation,  basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war. In four 
days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad  alone. The 
numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health -- which was 
attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers 
-- has now stopped disclosing them.

Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.

A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr City yesterday. He 
said young men were openly placing improvised explosive devices into 
the ground. They melt a shallow hole into the asphalt, dig the 
explosive,  cover it with dirt and put an old tire or plastic can over 
it to signal to the locals this is booby-trapped. He said on the main 
roads of Sadr City, there were a dozen landmines per every ten yards. 
His  car snaked and swirled to avoid driving over them. Behind the 
walls sits an angry Iraqi ready to detonate them as soon as an 
American convoy gets near. This is in Shiite land, the population that 
was supposed to love America for liberating Iraq.

For journalists the significant turning point came with the wave of 
abduction and kidnappings. Only two weeks ago we felt safe around  
Baghdad because foreigners were being abducted on the roads and  
highways between towns. Then came a frantic phone call from a 
journalist female friend at 11 p.m. telling me two Italian women had  
been abducted from their homes in broad daylight. Then the two  
Americans, who got beheaded this week and the Brit, were abducted 
from their homes in a residential neighborhood. They were supplying 
the entire block with round the clock electricity from their generator 
to win friends. The abductors grabbed one of them at 6 a.m. when he 
came  out to switch on the generator; his beheaded body was thrown back 
near the neighborhoods./CONTINUED BELOW

WSJ reporter Fassahi's e-mail to friends /2

9/29/2004 2:47:12 PM

The insurgency, we are told, is rampant with no signs of calming down.  
If any thing, it is growing stronger, organized and more sophisticated  
every day. The various elements within it-baathists, criminals, 
nationalists and Al Qaeda-are cooperating and coordinating.

I went to an emergency meeting for foreign correspondents with the  
military and embassy to discuss the kidnappings. We were somberly told  
our fate would largely depend on where we were in the kidnapping 
chain once it was determined we were missing. Here is how it goes: 
criminal gangs grab you and sell you up to Baathists in Fallujah, who 
will in turn sell you to Al Qaeda. In turn, cash and weapons flow the 
other  way from Al Qaeda to the Baathisst to the criminals. My 
friend Georges, the French journalist snatched on the road to Najaf, 
has been missing for a month with no word on release or whether he is 
still alive.

America's last hope for a quick exit? The Iraqi police and National  
Guard units we are spending billions of dollars to train. The cops are 
being murdered by the dozens every day-over 700 to date -- and the  
insurgents are infiltrating their ranks. The problem is so serious that 
the U.S. military has allocated $6 million dollars to buy out  30,000 
cops they just trained to get rid of them quietly.

As for reconstruction: firstly it's so unsafe for foreigners to operate 
that almost all projects have come to a halt. After two years, of the 
$18 billion Congress appropriated for  Iraq reconstruction only about 
$1 billion or so has been spent and a chuck has now been reallocated 
for improving security, a sign of just how bad things are going here.

Oil dreams? Insurgents disrupt oil flow routinely as a result of  
sabotage and oil prices have hit record high of $49 a barrel. Who did 
this war exactly benefit? Was it worth it? Are we safer  because Saddam 
is holed up and Al Qaeda is running around in Iraq?

Iraqis say that thanks to America they got freedom in exchange for 
insecurity. Guess what? They say they'd take security over freedom 
any day, even if it means having a dictator ruler.

I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if Saddam Hussein were  
allowed to run for elections he would get the majority of the vote. 
This is truly sad.

Then I went to see an Iraqi scholar this week to talk to him about 
elections here. He has been trying to educate the public on the  
importance of voting. He said, "President Bush wanted to turn  Iraq  
into a democracy that would be an example for the Middle East. 
Forget about democracy, forget about being a model for the region, we 
have to  salvage Iraq before all is lost."

One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For those 
of us on the ground it's hard to imagine what if any thing could  
salvage it from its violent downward spiral. The genie of terrorism, 
chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of 
American mistakes and it can't be put back into a bottle.

The Iraqi government is talking about having elections in three months 
while half of the country remains a 'no go zone'-out of the hands of  
the government and the Americans and out of reach of journalists. In  
the other half, the disenchanted population is too terrified to show  
up at polling stations. The Sunnis have already said they'd boycott  
elections, leaving the stage open for polarized government of Kurds  
and Shiites that will not be deemed as legitimate and will most  
certainly lead to civil war.

I asked a 28-year-old engineer if he and his family would participate  
in the Iraqi elections since it was the first time Iraqis could to  
some degree elect a leadership. His response summed it all: "Go 
and vote and risk being blown into pieces or followed by the insurgents 
and murdered for cooperating with the Americans? For what? To 
practice democracy? Are you joking?"

-Farnaz

 
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