"May 27, 2007 Imad Khadduri

From an email to Dahr Jamail:

Baghdad is a smashed city...

"Below is an email I have just received from my close friend and translator Abu Talat.

While he has fled Baghdad with his family and is now a refugee in Syria, he recently had to return to Baghdad in order to try to salvage what is left of his former life (his car, belongings from his house, etc.) before returning back to Syria.

His note is instructive as to the current living conditions in the capital city of Iraq.

Here is the full text of his message:

Habibi…

Baghdad is a SMASHED city…no roads to drive on…most of them are closed off by concrete obstacles with concertina wire. In addition, the presence of the Iraqi military, who cover their faces with black masks and hold their guns in such a way that when you see them you will definitely be afraid that they will shoot you.
The shops in most of the area I went to see are closed. I asked one of the shop owners I know, 55-year-old Abu Fadhil, since I heard that his shop was robbed. I found his door closed and locked and he was nowhere to be found.

Later, on my way to Sadr City, I found that two of the three roads which lead all the way from south to north Baghdad are either partially or totally closed in some places. You still remember the highways in Baghdad…well now most of them are closed, or at least fenced off with obstacles, yet they say there is some progress in the security situation inside the city!

Everyday two or three cars explode across Baghdad, killing large numbers of civilians.

When I returned to my neighborhood of al-Adhamiya, I couldn't get in unless the soldiers checked my ID and my car, even though the guards are from the same neighborhood and they know me personally. But they had to check it to ensure that no car bombs might happen. Nevertheless, daily mortars shell my neighborhood and those are out of control, despite this concrete wall placed by the Americans which now surrounds our neighborhood. Despite all that they do, they cannot bring security to our small neighborhood.

Needless to say, Baghdad has been changed into THE CITY OF GARBAGE. You can find it everywhere. You can smell the stench of dead bodies wherever you go. Talking of electricity, there is now only one hour daily. That's it. From where we're staying in the city center, in Bab al-Muadham, I can see from the balcony that people sleep nearly naked on their rooftops because it is so hot and there is no electricity to run fans or air conditioners. Thank God that there are two large generators that maintain electricity in our building.

Everyday by 2-3 pm the buildings where we are staying are closed so that noone can leave or enter. That way it is kept secure, and this is how it remains until the next morning. As far as my family life in this condition, we are as though we are in jail from 2-3 pm until the second morning where the doors are opened at 7 am. My son goes to the hospital to work, but for the last two days he finds it without any running water. [His son works in Baghdad Medical City, the largest hospital in Iraq] For the last 2 weeks, as he told me, the hospital has been without any air conditioning and almost without patients, although it's the biggest hospital in Iraq.

My sons wife, who is also a doctor, has to go to another hospital just to try to assist since there is a drastic lack of Gynecologists. She stays in her hospital for three days continuously before my son picks her up with his car on the fourth day to bring her home, in order to insure her safety so she doesn't have to take a bus or taxi. As for my daughter, she has not passed out the doorway of this apartment where we are staying for the last week except for one time for some work she had to accomplish.
My wife left here only once, when she went to her job (which she has been on leave from since we left to Syria) in order to apply for a full year vacation. Thank God she got it.

As for me, I found my car ruined, so I had to repair it. For that I called the mechanic to come to my home and repair it, since I couldn't take the car to him since all the mechanics shops are closed and there is no place to have a car repaired. All of those shops are totally closed. When I saw the mechanic he said, "We cannot live anymore, and there is no job we can find."

Dahr, this short letter gives you just a glance of the current situation in Baghdad. With the next letter I will tell you some more."

. How many in the audience will be future "terrorists"?

Imad Khadduri

Treasure of Baghdad

Guilt

28 December 2006

It was 9 p.m. when my cell phone rang. The screen showed an Iraqi number. My heart stopped for a minute! I was scared because it was about 5 a.m. in Baghdad. I immediately thought something bad happened! It was a second until I answered but it felt like an hour. Million things came into my mind in that second. Who was it? Why they are calling at this time? Something bad happened? Someone might have died?

It was one of my best friends in Iraq. I asked her what happened immediately. Her voice was different. She spoke slowly, sadly, and desperately. “I haven’t even slept, B,” she said. I was speechless! I didn’t know. I was afraid to ask her and get the saddest reply. Eventually I did.

“What happened?”

“There were clashes in my neighborhood since the morning,” she said.

There was nothing new about this, but I why she said that. My heart pounded like a drum. I just didn’t want to hear that someone was hurt.

“No one was hurt. I am scared,” she said. “Armed men and interior ministry commandoes fought each other in our neighborhood all day. You can’t imagine how it was. It was hell.”

“Get the hell out of there,” I said.

“I am supposed to go to Jordan tomorrow but the roads are still closed. I don’t know if I am going to be able to get out of the house tomorrow,” she said.

Treasure of Baghdad

Iraq 2005

Khalid

..on one of the Iraqi TV channels, a governmental channel, there is a daily show that started recently, where police, interrogates real criminals that were arrested in Iraq, in front of the camera, we don't get to see the police faces, we only hear their voices, while the camera is focused on the criminals' faces, zooming in and out, all the time. those criminals are "terrorists" that the Iraqi police and the un-national guard arrested, and they are the ones that are doing -supposedly- the beheading and the killing of the national guard and police operations, and also the kidnapping and stealing, rape and thefts, and every other thing that you might think of. The police ask them: why do you do that?
For money, sir!
How much are you getting paid?
100$ for an operation, sir!
And what do you do with that money?
We buy alcohols and drugs, sir!
What is your advice for all the terrorists that are still fighting?
I advice them to surrender, sir, and to cooperate with the authorities, sir!

This is exactly what each and every one of them said, since the show started, and till today, showing many of them a day, and then you learn details about some of those criminals: they confess that they kidnapped girls and raped them, then slaughtered them. One of them, has a big beard, and then they tell us he is gay and was caught having sex with another man inside the mosque.
Another one, confessed that his mother is a pimp, and that his friends used to come to his house to "have fun" with his sisters.
And the story goes on..
And while these "confessions" are about to be over, this question should always come:
where does that money come from?
from the Syrian intelligence, sir!
and then the policeman voice, preaches them, telling them how low they are, and what kind of disgusting creatures they are, and how they stained the word "jihad" and how hypocrite they are, pretending to be mojahideen while they are hardly humans, and the policeman would also say: if you were real mojahideen we -police- would have been the first to follow you, you are thieves, rapists and thugs. Can you see dear audience? Those are the mojahideen that you hear about in your country, those are the ones that are fighting, those are the so-called resistance, low scum that worth nothing, real Iraqis should help capture them whenever you see them, they deserve more than just killing, they deserve to be killed a hundred times, if they attack only Americans, if they were honest, we would have been the first to follow them!Khalid 2005

"What's his name?"

"What's his name?" asked Col. Sean MacFarland, the commander of the 4,000-soldier First Brigade.

"Lisk, sir," someone replied.

"If he can be saved, they'll save him," said Colonel MacFarland, who had been only a few yards away in an armored personnel carrier when the mortar shell landed.

About 10 minutes later, the word came.

"He's dead," Colonel MacFarland said.

Whenever a soldier dies, in Iraq or anywhere else, a wave of uneasiness — fear, revulsion, guilt, sadness — ripples through the survivors. It could be felt on Monday, even when the fighting was still going on.

"He was my best friend," Specialist Allan Sammons said, his lower lip shaking. "That's all I can say. I'm kind of shaken up."

Another soldier asked, "You want to take a break?"

Specialist Sammons said, "I'll be fine," his lip still shaking.

Sergeant Lisk's friends and superiors recalled a man who had risen from a hard childhood to become someone whom they counted on for cheer in a grim and uncertain place.

"He was a special kid," Specialist Sammons said. "He came from a broken home. I think he was divorced. I'm worried that it might be hard to find someone."

He said he would write a letter to the family — to whom it was not clear just yet.

Iraq 2005

An insurgent group, the Victorious Army Group, has extended a deadline for a Web design contest, according to an Internet posting. The group has set a Jan. 15 2006 deadline for submissions of a design "worthy of the group's reputation and the reputation of the jihad and the mujahedeen," according to a translation provided by the SITE Institute, which monitors jihadist messages.

The winner is promised "God's blessings" and the opportunity to fire three long-range rockets at an American military base.

The land of two rivers

“O’ people of Iraq, I have hated you and you have hated me. I have loathed you and you have loathed me.

May Allah give me a better people, and may He give you a worst ruler.” – Imam Ali bin Abi Talib, addressing Iraqis.

                                   Monday, February 12, 2007
                                                                    Iraqi Resistance and the US plan Konfused Kid

Dear reader,

I'm gonna tell you something that all the Iraqis who pretend they're full of pride and shit don't tell you, every Iraqi who knows what's good for him wants the US military plan to happen - it's a known fact today that while US soldiers do occasionally rape 15-year-olds and add naked photos of our hairy butts to their family albums, they are still infintely more trustworthy than any Iraqi soldier from anywhere. When an American soldier knocks on your door for a search, you go 'oh thank god' but when Iraqis do the same, you are instantly on your toes. Forget about all those Iraqis and Arab bloggers who live outside or have never been in there recently, they don't know what it is like - Iraq is dead - we are living in a newfound, and very real, age of sect. The intellects and all the other deadbeats like you and me who do nothing but bitch about how Iraq is great and how we had a beautiful country before the war are having a hard time accepting this, but they're going to have to deal with it.
The American forces are the only forces that are to be relied upon in Iraq, as sloppy and careless as they are, because they don't have anything personal against Abu Haneefa or Musa al-Kadhim, I may have comitted national blasphemy by saying this, but it's 100% better to be honest than a nationalist hypocritical asswipe like most Arabs and Iraqis are. First step towards healing is diagnosis. I really hope they completely remove Sadr City and Adhamiya from the map.

Adhamiya

Ahh, my age-old district. How much I loved you and how much today I come to despise you, for harboring all those Saddamists and criminals who masqueraded under the glorious name of resistance, yes I did support them but only because I was afraid of the Anees & Badr Corps.
The other day, during the same day when Zeyad's brother reported a death of his neighbor, I actually lost a relative, the holy rockets which have been blissfully directed by the Hidden Imam, may Allah hasten his alarm clock, has finally managed to kill my aunt's husband's brother. You wanna hear something funny?

He was a Shiite, 100% to the bone, and the only Shiite linegae in our honest-to-Abu Haneefa Sunni family.

How I got the news? I woke up at 7 AM the next day, my mother came and told me immediately....I have cried like crazy over my four dead friends, and I was very upset about the death of a number of people, but that day I glanced uninterestingly...and then I shrugged, I said: 'Serves him right. He should've went out of the hellhole a long time ago.'

The fact that I didn't even bother to write about it then gives you an idea of how much emotional I got all about it. Death is to us a fact of life - examine the beautiful irony in the previous sentence. How did I become like this? I have attained the languid unconsciousness of an assassin with all the insecrutiy and the tight-sealed anger sown deep down inside. I am ready to do atrocities without flipping an eyelid if you want me to. Maybe if I was stupid and immature I would've already been with the rest of em, carrying an AK-47 I don't know how to use correctly in front of our local mosque, praying very little and cursing very much while exchanging short semi-porno clips on my latest Nokia mobile. Glorious be my crusade nevertheless, for I am an Iraqi Resistance.

Here are some of my other news which I didn't care much to say :

About a month ago, another college friend of mine was near killed in a bus stop, he was riding a minivan heading towards a Shiite district, al-Jowadir, when the beloved Iraqi resistance came and showered everyone with the bullets of mercy, ending their pitiful existence as sheep waiting for the slaughter, the bullet has come for you, Nameer - but Nameer had a thick butt, and the bullets couldn't get through him - they tore through every non-critical part of his body but they left his heart, lungs, head and penis intact, so he could continue to live as a decent human-being - he did lose his left hand though, and he is a lefty.
As Borat would've said : "High Five!"...oops, sorry I forgot you don't have a hand anymore.

and also I forgot to mention the lovely incident of Ubada, another college friend of mine who is also a glorious resident in Adhamiya, and precisely at the Sifeena, home of the most glorious freedom fighters - this Ubada is a bearded guy with blue eyes who likes to frequent the mosques and distribute Sunni bloc Accordance Front fliers, and one day his pop tells him to go bring something from his auntie's empty house, as she was a smart woman and left Iraq about a few months ago, little did poor Ubada know, but the house was rigged by the beautiful Iraqi resistance in case the infidels come in to try and search it.

The limbs that were once Ubada were collected and buried at Abu Haneefa mosque, so long, martyr, too bad you didn't have any pussy in your short 21-years-old life while you were busy doing all that mosque touring, well, maybe in heaven with your 77,000 virgins.

Konfused Kid