Genocidal Fantasies

Richard Seymour on "The Genocidal Imagination of Christopher Hitchens". Its an article well worth reading, because it so thoroughly dissects much of the rhetoric that supports the war in iraq. Many of the linked sources are well worth reading as well.

The Benefits of Working With the CIA

Iraqi President "Talabani, a Kurd, is in the bizarre position of defending one of Saddam's top generals convicted of war crimes against Kurds." This is because the gentleman in question was recruited by the CIA in the late 90s to help with a secret plot to overthrow Saddam. What tangled webs we weave....

The Iraqi Resistance: Interesting Happenings

This is absolutely the most important news to come out of Iraq in the last two years.

Seven of the most important Sunni-led insurgent organisations fighting the US occupation in Iraq have agreed to form a public political alliance with the aim of preparing for negotiations in advance of an American withdrawal, their leaders have told the Guardian.

I had started a blog post a couple of days ago which I never managed to finish in which I was writing about the significance of the Islamic Army of Iraq's split, with a breakaway faction disagreeing with the IAI's increasingly confrontational posture with regard to Al Qaeda in Iraq. This followed on reports that the 1920 Revolution Brigades, some of whose members had been targeted by Al Qaeda in Iraq had started actually helping the American forces against AQ.

Here's a very interesting interview with some of the leaders of the Iraqi resistance.

Many of the Iraqi insurgent groups have become increasingly critical of Al Qaeda's bloody, indiscriminate bombings of civilians and disregard for Iraqi life. They've also been very suspicious of their pan-Islamist agenda and non-Iraqi leadership, which doesn't have Iraq's best interests at heart. What's interesting is that the American government has been hammering on and on about Al Qaeda, boosting their popularity (and funding) outside Iraq, even while it is the nationalist Iraqi groups that are causing the most damage to the Americans and American-backed Iraqi government forces.

The recent report on the increasing condemnation of Al Qaeda's tactics from a number of groups within Iraq, as well as a fatwa from a prominent pro-insurgency cleric in Kuwait saying that Muslims should not support Al Qaeda because they were indiscriminately targeting civilians, were indicators of a growing split in the insurgency as a large part of it has started considering the political aspect of things and is thinking about how to influence events after American troops leave. What's interesting is that most groups (including the smaller Baathist groups) are thinking about participation in elections. Al Qaeda is different because their focus is not on rebuilding Iraq but on killing Shias and Americans in Jihad. A post-American Iraq for them would still be a war zone in which to kill Shias.

Abu Aardvark has some interesting articles about all this up on his blog.

I remain sceptical about the ability of this group to work with Shia militias though, especially as AL-Qaeda and pro-AQ groups will continue to inflame sectarian violence through their bombings etc. But perhaps this is one dim ray of hope that all will not collapse into complete chaos following the impending American withdrawal.

IZ

Orientalism Still Alive and Kicking

There has probably been no discipline more compromised by its close association with imperialistic government policies in the west than anthropology. Whether it is creating racial hierarchies to justify colonialism, trying to learn how to manipulate societies in order to legitimate colonial governments, or prop up friendly regimes, introducing infectious diseases into isolated tribal societies in order to model the impact of a nuclear war on American society in which a huge chunk of its population might die, or trying to justify abu gharaib by asserting that force is the only thing Arab societies respect and sexual abuse is the best way to get Arab prisoner's to talk, anthropology has been moulded by, and has moulded, how imperial powers interact with societies across the globe.

Its no wonder then that America has turned to anthropologists once again given its problems in Iraq. Enter the Human Terrain System - a plan to insert anthropologists into Iraq to study the "culture" from the ground and provide the Pentagon on the valuable information and perspective it currently lacks. As this U.S. Army site breathlessly informs us:

U.S. forces can operate more effectively in the human terrain in which insurgents live and function, HTS will provide deployed brigade commanders and their staffs direct social-science support in the form of ethnographic and social research, cultural information research, and social data analysis that can be employed as part of the military decision-making process.

Of course, this has led to a widespread outcry and debate within anthropology circles. Most anthropologists know the roots of their discipline lie in the colonisers attempts to know/subjugate "alien" societies. Ever since Edward Said wrote his monumental work 'Orientalism' in 1978, the idea that branches of western knowledge have been constructed around attempts to dominate other societies and cultures has become increasingly understood, and post-colonial anthropology has done much to take to task much of the discipline, its inbuilt racist and hegemonic assumptions and aims.

Except in America. Its so interesting to see how Edward Said's name, as well as the term 'orientalism' have become "dirty" words in the language of much of the American political and cultural elite. People who have never read the book remark with scorn that Said was a Muslim fundamentalist (he was Anglican), a hater of the west (he was a professor of English literature and loved the arts), an opponent of the Enlightenment (he was a strong humanitarian and believer in universal rights, it is the abuse and absence of these ideals in much of academia that was the focus of his work on culture) and an anti-semite (despite having many Jewish friends and co-workers and, as he pointed out, being a semite himself).

Interestingly enough, the debate over anthropology's co-option into the Iraq war is being couched in the media as a struggle over whether the discipline will remain in an ivory tower or become "relevant". Consider this odd article which mixes intelligent quotes with muddle-headed observations:

That, said George Mason University's Gusterson, points to a more fundamental issue that arose in anthropology in the 1970s: the idea that cooperation with the military ran contrary to the science's basic principles.

"You pitch a tent ... among the people you want to understand, you live with them, you catch their diseases, you eat their horrible food, you share their joys and pains," he said. "The thought that you would cultivate those relationships of trust and intimacy and then ... go to the Pentagon and say 'these are the people you should kill, these are the people you shouldn't kill,' that's extremely problematic for people with that methodology."

For some elder anthropologists, the discipline's recoil had by the 21st century led to practical irrelevance.

"Margaret Mead was on 'Johnny Carson' more than two dozen times," said Felix Moos, a University of Kansas anthropologist. "Today when I ask an audience can you name one internationally or nationally known anthropologist, I meet nothing but silence."

Umm... now what is the real issue here? The fact that anthropologists are attempting to become part of a society in the name of creating knowledge and "understanding" while having the ulterior motive of creating types of knowledge geared for outsiders who wish to use violence to change that society for their own purposes, or that anthropologists don't get invited to the Johnny Carson show any more?

Having said all of this, the social sciences certainly need to play a greater role in informing and educating people about the world, even if it is only to correct the assumptions of other, more directly "orientalist" social science. If the Human Terrain System is overtly problematic, other government initiatives are less easily categorised. For example, is it possible for the social sciences to inform and shape a less-imperialistic 'war on terror'? This excellent article in the New Yorker gives some food for thought on the issue. One of the anthropologists involved in the HTS has his own blog here where he also attempts to tackle the ethics of what he is doing.

IZ

More Reconstruction Highlights

A few more reconstruction highlights. The first from a report in the Washington Post:

A $75 million project to build the largest police academy in Iraq has been so grossly mismanaged that the campus now poses health risks to recruits and might need to be partially demolished, U.S. investigators have found.

The Baghdad Police College, hailed as crucial to U.S. efforts to prepare Iraqis to take control of the country's security, was so poorly constructed that feces and urine rained from the ceilings in student barracks. Floors heaved inches off the ground and cracked apart. Water dripped so profusely in one room that it was dubbed "the rain forest."

"This is the most essential civil security project in the country -- and it's a failure," said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an independent office created by Congress. "The Baghdad police academy is a disaster."

This article in USA Today describes how the big infrastructure projects started being wound up in 2005, even though very few had been completed. It notes that of the $18.4 billion allocated by Congress for reconstruction in 2003, $5 billion was diverted to training Iraq's security forces. Meanwhile the costs of security of American personel involved in any project kept going up:

Originally estimated at 9% of total project costs, security costs have risen to between 20% and 30%, says Brig. Gen. William McCoy Jr., commander of the Army Corps of Engineers in Iraq.

Which would mean that the actual allocation, when adjusting for the diverted money and security costs was something like $9.38 billion - half the officially allocated amount. Its still a hefty sum, but then we've seen how that was spent.

But what about the success stories? The places and projects where things actually got built and handed over to Iraqis in working order? Well, the story there isn't too good either, as this report notes:

Of the eight projects inspected, some just six months after being declared a success by the US officials, six were no longer functioning properly, the report said.

At Baghdad international airport the inspectors discovered that $11.8m had been spent on new electricity generators, but that already $8.6m-worth were not working.

It was a similar scene at a barracks built for special forces in Baghdad where four large generators, each costing $50,000, were not working.

And at a maternity and children's hospital in Irbil a sophisticated oxygen distribution system was not used because staff did not trust it.

In the same hospital needles and bandages were tossed into the sewer system, which frequently blocked, because an incinerator installed to deal with such waste was not in use.

According to the report, this was "because those initially trained to operate the incinerator were no longer employed at the hospital" and because the door to the incinerator was padlocked and no-one knew who had the key.

And at a recruiting centre in the town of Hilla faulty wiring was rife and blocked drains had caused the bathrooms to warp, inspectors said.

The Sigir team said that the speed and scale of the deterioration was so bad that it was doubtful whether some of the projects would even survive.

Alas, not a very happy story at all.

IZ

Shoddy Construction on the Imperial Mothership

The Washington Post reports on the embarrassing revelation that the $592 million U.S. embassy in Iraq is suffering not just from cost overruns, delays and Justice Department investigations over labour abuse, but might be virtually unusable due to shoddy construction. The fears arose after a contingent moved into the completed guards complex in the embassy compound:

The first signs of trouble, according to the cable, emerged when the kitchen staff tried to cook the inaugural meal in the new guard base on May 15. Some appliances did not work. Workers began to get electric shocks. Then a burning smell enveloped the kitchen as the wiring began to melt.

All the food from the old guard camp -- a collection of tents -- had been carted to the new facility, in the expectation that the 1,200 guards would begin moving in the next day. But according to the cable, the electrical meltdown was just the first problem in a series of construction mistakes that soon left the base uninhabitable, including wiring problems, fuel leaks and noxious fumes in the sleeping trailers.

"Poor quality construction . . . life safety issues . . . left [the embassy] with no recourse but to shut the camp down, in spite of the blistering heat in Baghdad," the May 29 cable informed Washington.

Such challenges with construction contracts inside the fortified enclave known as the Green Zone reflect the broader problems that have thwarted reconstruction efforts throughout war-torn Iraq.

Indeed. The issue highlights the problems of the entire reconstruction effort in Iraq. Even while American politicians grow increasingly opposed to reconstruction spending and complain about how the United States is spending so much on an 'ungrateful' Iraqi public, reports have repeatedly shown how most "reconstruction" money is spent on private defence contractors, projects are allocated not through open public bidding, but to companies (such as Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellog Brown and Root) to which administration officials have rather dubious personal ties.

This article from the American magazine MotherJones chronicles a few of the reconstruction "efforts" that have come to light. They include, amongst other things:

A bridge and oil pipeline that was destroyed in the American invasion in 2003. After a survey it was estimated that it could be repaired within five months at a cost of $5 million. An Iraqi construction company offered to do the job. (Note: Iraqi companies had repaired the fair more extensive infrastructure damage throughout the country after the first Gulf War within a year.) Instead it was decided that the pipeline should be made more secure and built under the ground. Halliburton was awarded a $75 million contract to do so (without bidding). 3 years later, all the money was spent and the job wasn't done. Investigations found that Halliburton knew their proposal was not technically possible - but they took the contract anyway. A new contract for $40 million was awarded to another American company. The bridge and pipeline have yet to be built.

The Parsons Corporation was given a $243 million no-bid contract to build 150 medical clinics. By January 2006 it was found that only 6 clinics were completed and only 14 more could possibly be completed before the money ran out. Parsons would "try" to complete them by April 2006 when it was leaving the country. This, by the way, was what the American Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction called the "most important program in the health sector".

But its not just private corporations which are burning money. Take this report from in the IHT:

Late Friday, the inspector general also released an audit report on a $147 million United States-led program to train and equip thousands of Iraqis to protect oil pipelines, electrical transmission lines and hundreds of key installations in both sectors.

Begun in September 2003, the effort, called Task Force Shield, was so disorganized that the auditors were never able to determine basic facts like how many Iraqis were trained, how many weapons were purchased and where much of the equipment ended up, the report says.

The Congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has launched an investigation into Iraqi reconstruction (you can check out their website here) but its safe to say that apart from a slap on the wrist here and a cluck of disapproval there, its not going to do much in terms of the damage that's been done.

Halliburton's stock just keeps on rising, as it grows bloated on the profits of the Iraqi war - money that ultimately comes from American taxpayers. To further rub insult into injury, Halliburton has now shifted its headquarters to the tax-haven of Dubai. Its no wonder that some Americans are beginning to feel that the entire Iraq War was a costly, bloody way of subsidising corporate America.

IZ

Meanwhile, Back in Afar Land...

This whole lal masjid drama has been completely distracting me from other matters. Quiet apart from the fact that I should be working on my dissertation, there have been a couple of things I had wanted to blog about:

Recently I read an article by Priya Satia called "The Defense of Inhumanity: Air Control and the British Idea of Arabia" (American Historical Review Feb 2006) which apart from its interesting main thesis sparked some ideas about what Afghanistan means as a landscape of Jihad and spiritual redemption for the ISI and military men who became increasingly involved with covert operations there through the 80s and 90s. If I were ever to write an article on this, I might easily call it "The Defense of Inhumanity: Jihad and the Pakistani Idea of Afghanistan". I'm sure that more than one ISI officer in Afghanistan has seen himself as a sort of Lawrence of Arabia, living out the dream of a pure, manly life while helping a tribal people free themselves from the shackles of oppressive foreign rule.

But more on that some other time. Maybe.

The other interesting thing I've recently read is a policy and analysis report prepared by two media experts at the American propaganda unit Radio Liberty, entitled "Iraqi Insurgent Media: The War of Images and Ideas" and because its an American article it must of course have a subtitle which is "How Sunni Insurgents in Iraq and Their Supporters Worldwide Are Using the Media." You can download it here. Some interesting information there on the different insurgent groups, their use of media, and their discussions on strategies, aims and so forth.

Also, I now find myself trying to read for my dissertation, reading Mark Mazower's 'Dark Continent', and desperate to read my newly acquired collection of essays by Philip Curtin on 'The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex' which is about the institution of slave plantations - from their origins to their decline with the end of slavery in the Americas. (Note: By the late nineteenth century keeping slaves was so unprofitable that plantation owners were freeing them in droves even before the final abolition laws came into place throughout the Americas). All this, and I am spending most of my time reading blogs about Maulana Auntie!

Speaking of blogs, I've come across an interesting blog called 'Not the Whole Truth'. Given that the humanities and social sciences have generally been bulldozed into a ditch by the "useful" disciplines devoted to the deification of capital, its always encouraging to come across people in Pakistan with a genuine desire to grapple with basic questions about culture, identity and political theory. Its going up on my blogroll!

IZ

On the Latest Operation in Iraq

So how's the new operation in Iraq going?
Swell, just swell...

Here's an eye-opening account of how U.S. troops clear a street of 'terrorists' in Baquba:

The radio traffic was crackling. Captain Isaac Torres, the commander of Comanche Company, was impatient. An airstrike was called in on the house with the propane tanks. But now it was late afternoon and he wanted to know how the platoon planned to resume the mission of clearing the area south of the street.

The platoon thought it was time to use the bludgeon, pounding the houses across the road with airstrikes or artillery. There were 84 days left in its 15-month tour, which had already included plenty of combat. Apart from the fleeing family and a stray man who had come bearing a white flag to beg for water, no civilians were in sight....

The next morning, an M1 tank arrived on the scene. The neighborhood reverberated with enormous booms as the Americans blasted the front row of homes with antitank missiles, artillery and tank fire. The platoon's advance had been stymied for a day, but there had been no American casualties and more of the insurgent bombs had been cleared out.

And how do we know that the buildings were abandoned seeing as the soldiers had not checked them out? Well, here's an interesting tidbit from earlier in the same article:

The houses where the soldiers had secured their toehold seemed to have been abandoned, but soon after the platoon settled in, a small line of weary Iraqi civilians carrying a white cloth flag emerged and slowly walked away. If some civilians had been lingering in or near the neighborhood, perhaps some insurgents were, too.

Ah. So they were very thorough, then? Not much time for winning any hearts and minds here.

IZ

PBS Documentary: Endgame

After watching PBS' documentary 'Endgame', I'm astonished by just how little we knew of the strategic thinking behind the war in Iraq. In the day to day news reports of bombings, kidnappings and "security" operations, its often difficult to discern the larger picture. Its a true case of not seeing the forest for the trees.

PBS has pieced together an incredibly informative documentary. You can watch the entire thing on their website, which also has transcripts of interviews, links to articles and a informative timeline. This is, so far, the definitive account of the changing U.S. strategy in Iraq. Some really important points emerge which really help to deepen our understanding of what has come before, and what is happening now.

By now it is common knowledge that the military and pentagon planners had no post-invasion plan to secure Iraq. There were plans around, most notably one drawn up by the State Department, which were never seriously examined by the war party. One key failure that followed from this was the unwillingness of the American forces to provide security for the Iraqi people after the Saddam government fell. In the looting and violence that followed, groups of armed Iraqi men started banding together to provide security for their neighbourhoods - in these were the seeds of the various militias and insurgent groups that abound today.

What the documentary reveals is that the Americans never planned to secure the Iraqi population. Rumsfeld and his military plans were always looking for the quick exit strategy - they insisted that the U.S. army should try and withdraw as soon as possible. This was known as the 'Light Footprint' strategy. The idea was to withdraw to safe bases, train a new Iraqi army who would take up the security task as soon as they were ready, and then pull out of the country. Rumsfeld refused to countenance alternative strategies of 'clear & hold'.

The effects of this were numerous. Firstly, it allowed the militias free reign, allowing them to gain credibility and leverage. Secondly it allowed places like Fallujah to become safe havens for insurgent groups. The Iraqi army never managed to take over security operations, and with no security, chaos and bloodshed grew, reconstruction efforts stalled completely and the nascent Iraqi government continued to lose credibility in the eyes of Iraqis. Perhaps most ominously, Al-Qaeda was successful in its declared aim of sparking off a sectarian civil war. These failures were compounded by a military leadership obsessed with the focus on an 'Exit strategy' and a presidential administration that refused to admit the truth of what was happening, both to the U.S. public and to itself and consequently refused to make any difficult decisions.

It was only in 2006 that the movement to shift to a different strategy gained momentum - that was to take U.S. troops out of their safe bases and into the streets - to provide security for Iraqi civilians and 'clear and hold' neighbourhoods. This strategy needed a huge commitment of troops and money and so Bush dithered. Until, that is, the 2006 elections which led to a resounding defeat for the Republicans. Galvanized by this defeat, Bush sacked Rumsfeld, the main opponent of a 'surge', a move ironically enough, supported by Democrats. The head of the military in Iraq was also removed. The new plan was adopted, but once again watered down. It was considered politically too unpalatable to commit the kinds of numbers of troops a 'clear and hold' strategy needed. Instead of a 'surge', the U.S. generals were to get a 'dribble'.

IZ

The Geek War

Time magazine has printed an interview with an iraqi bomb-maker, one of those responsible for the construction of the sophisticated devices that are the cause of most American casualties (and which the US government still blames Iran for). It makes for very interesting reading. Here's an excerpt:

Saif Abdallah says his inventions have helped kill or maim scores, possibly hundreds, of Americans. For more than four years, he has been developing remote-control devices that Sunni insurgents use to detonate improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the roadside bombs that are the No. 1 killer of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. The only time he ever felt a pang of regret was in the spring of 2006, when he heard that the Pentagon, in a bid to fight the growing IED menace, had roped in a team of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Abdallah, an electronics engineer by training, once dreamed of studying for a Ph.D. there. "I thought to myself, If my life had gone differently, who knows? I might have been on that team," he says, his eyes widening as he imagines that now impossible scenario. Then he shrugs. "God decided I should be on the other side."

IZ

Edit 1: Thaks to foodi for pointing out that I had forgotten to link to the article in question. I have now done so.

Edit 2: In an op-ed article in the NYT, John Robb called the war in Iraq the first "Open-Source War". After watching the Islamic State of Iraq's video instruction manual/propaganda documentary "Hunting the Minesweepers" and its slick presentation on how to take out the latest armoured vehicles the U.S. army has deployed in Iraq, the term seems a particularly apt one.

New Found Freedom

Oil workers went on strike in Iraq after the government refused to pay promised bonuses again. The Iraqi government displayed its keen understanding of freedom by issuing arrest warrants for union leaders and sending in soldiers to deal with threats to oil production "with an iron fist."

Obviously the Iraqi government has learnt from watching American capitalism at work in Iraq, what with American construction contractors using slave labour to build the American embassy and U.S. army camps in Iraq.

Interestingly enough the American embassy is the size of the vatican and has been described by Tom Engelhardt as "the Imperial Mothership dropping into Baghdad."

Here's a description of the embassy:

"This self-contained compound will include the embassy itself, residences for the ambassador and staff, PX, commissary, cinema, retail and shopping, restaurants, schools, fire station and supporting facilities such as power generation, water purification system, telecommunications, and waste water treatment facilities. In total, the 104 acre compound will include over twenty buildings including one classified secure structure and housing for over 380 families."

What? No slave pens?

IZ

How to Escalate Civil Wars 101

Here's an interesting article from the International Herald Tribune: 'U.S. Arming Sunnis in Iraq to Battle Old Qaeda Allies'. Essentially it relates how the U.S. military, delighted by infighting between Sunni nationalist militias and Sunni Jihadist militias has decided to arm the nationalists and turn a blind eye to their activities according to the dictum 'the enemy of my enemy, who is also my enemy and the enemy of my allies (who are also allies of another of my enemies) is my friend'. Guardian photojournalist Sean Smith witnessed the phenomenon which he recorded here amongst a series of other disturbing photos from Iraq.

After quoting glowing reports of success from American military commanders, the IHT article goes on to note:

But critics of the strategy, including some American officers, say it could amount to the Americans' arming both sides in a future civil war. The United States has spent more than $15 billion in building up Iraq's army and police force, whose manpower of 350,000 is heavily Shiite. With an American troop drawdown increasingly likely in the next year, and little sign of a political accommodation between Shiite and Sunni politicians in Baghdad, the critics say, there is a risk that any weapons given to Sunni groups will eventually be used against Shiites. There is also the possibility the weapons could be used against the Americans themselves.

The question is: who will the militias use these weapons against? Will it be the Americans? Or Shiites? Several months ago I had linked to this article which chronicled how many Sunni militias are leaving off attacking the Americans in order to attack Shiites. Last month, we learnt that Moqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the Shiite Mahdi army was looking to forge ties with Sunni militias to try and build a pan-Iraqi movement to oppose U.S. occupation.

One suspects that once the weapons and money are in the hands of various local militia leaders, there will be no control over how they are used and who they are used against. In the fluctuating political landscape of a chaotic post-invasion Iraq, today's ally can be tomorrow's enemy and vice versa. And of course one would be naive to assume that armed gangs only use violence for political ends. Armed robbery, kidnappings, turf wars and vendettas are always going to be the primary use of weapons in a land where there so so much physical and economic insecurity. The Americans' claim that creating more armed gangs would help "to stabilize Iraq, and to speed American troops on their way home." Obviously, the second goal is the main one, the first, merely lip-service. After all, what does the Iraqi government have to say about this?

An Iraqi government official who was reached by telephone on Sunday said the government was uncomfortable with the American negotiations with the Sunni groups because they offered no guarantee that the militias would be loyal to anyone other than the American commander in their immediate area. "The government's aim is to disarm and demobilize the militias in Iraq," said Sadiq al-Rikabi, a political adviser to Maliki. "And we have enough militias in Iraq that we are struggling now to solve the problem. Why are we creating new ones?"

But who cares what the Iraqi government wants? They should just shut up and enjoy the freedom they have been given.

IZ

The Destruction of Culture

From an article by Simon Jenkins in the Guardian:

Hussaini confirmed a report two years ago by John Curtis, of the British Museum, on America's conversion of Nebuchadnezzar's great city of Babylon into the hanging gardens of Halliburton. This meant a 150-hectare camp for 2,000 troops. In the process the 2,500-year-old brick pavement to the Ishtar Gate was smashed by tanks and the gate itself damaged. The archaeology-rich subsoil was bulldozed to fill sandbags, and large areas covered in compacted gravel for helipads and car parks. Babylon is being rendered archaeologically barren.

Meanwhile the courtyard of the 10th-century caravanserai of Khan al-Raba was used by the Americans for exploding captured insurgent weapons. One blast demolished the ancient roofs and felled many of the walls. The place is now a ruin.

Outside the capital some 10,000 sites of incomparable importance to the history of western civilisation, barely 20% yet excavated, are being looted as systematically as was the museum in 2003. When George tried to remove vulnerable carvings from the ancient city of Umma to Baghdad, he found gangs of looters already in place with bulldozers, dump trucks and AK47s.

And on top of all this, the Salafist fundo militant groups have started a campaign to destroy Iraq's many shrines and tombs including the tomb of Ezekiel where Jews and Muslims used to worship together right up till 2003. Sigh.

IZ

Happiness in Iraq

I came across this blog by an Iraqi named Nabil. Its sad and disturbing and depressing and sometimes... funny.

For example there is this post:

Here's a funny story - its funny for me although it may sound horrible for you.

I was in my room, playing guitar as usual and was recording the song "Peace Train" for Cat Stevens, and after about 30 seconds on starting the song, when reaching the first line in the song, which was "Now I've been happy lately," a random bullet entered my room, crashed the window and broke all the glass and a heavy shooting then took place in the street.

I was like planted in my place and completely shocked because of the heavy shooting. I stopped the recording and went away from the windows to avoid getting in the cross-fire of the random bullets, and when the shooting was over, I went back to my room and checked what I recorded and here was the funny thing, that right after I said, "I've been happy lately," the bullet came in to my room.

It's like no one should be happy in this country, because if you say that you're happy, a bullet will come and smash your head right away.

maybe this country is cursed, because it's a really funny incident.

He then adds a link to the recording that he has uploaded. There's also a link to an uninterrupted version of Peace Train.

IZ

And the myth lives on

The architects of the Iraq war have a simple strategy to counter the growing evidence that they lied in order to stampede the United States into waging war: just ignore the truth and keeping lying.

A case in point is Dick Cheney's insistence in an interview with Rush Limbaugh that Iraq was connected to Al Qaeda and, by implication, in the September 11 attacks. Despite the mountain of claims to the contrary, the latest of which is a damning report issued by the Pentagon on the very same day as the interview, this lie through constant repetition will surely persist for a long time to come. To make it all the more believable, the lie is supported with another: that evidence has been found showing this link.

In other news, a study of primary school children in a Baghdad neighbourhood shows that 70% are suffering from trauma due to the violence unleashed by the invasion.