Leaving home

Layla Anwar A long way from Home

MAJOR BILL EDMONDS A Soldier's Story

Ara Ashjian Good-bye My Beloved Baghdad

Treasure of Baghdad A Crime We'll Never Forget

Khalid Jarrar LEAVING

Layla Anwar A long way from Home

Do you have any idea what's happening to the 4.5 million Iraqi refugees also known as DPs (displaced person)

DP no. 354,670,890,1001,2003...

DPs walking around with numbers and badges, carrying pieces of yellowed paper, application forms that they've shown over and over, old ID cards, expired passports, begging an administrator, supplicating an officer, knocking on NGOs doors only to hear what they've heard before ---sorry we can't help you.

Kawthar and her sister. Two orphaned women, the rest of the family has been murdered by the Mahdi Army, you know the Mahdi army don't you? The ones you support as a "patriotic resistance". Forced to leave their home in Baghdad and now in Damascus. The deal is they pay a rent they can't afford in exchange for food, sharing an apartment with a Syrian family.

Iraqi artist, Dr.Mahoud Ahmed

What about Qutaiba - Do you know Qutaiba ? He's 20 years old. He dreams of becoming a doctor, no university accepts him and besides, he can't afford it. He plays football with plastic slippers, he has no shoes. He looks forward to summer, so he can play football barefoot in some garbage dump that he considers his football field. "I am king here" he says, looking at the waste surrounding him.

And what about Hanan, have you ever heard of Hanan? Her one bedroom apartment has leaks everywhere. Her son picks old rusty cans and carefully places them where the water leaks, at the bottom of the 4 walls that surround her.

Did you come across Marwan ? He is only 40 but he looks 80. He is half paralyzed. "Torture" he says, without blinking...He has 7 kids to look after, the oldest is 13. The eldest now sells combs and bubble gums from a card box. Sometimes they eat, sometimes they don't.

What about Shereen, Batul, Afaf and Rima ? Have you seen them ?
Around 7 pm they head towards the Red Cabaret, all painted up with cheap make up, the ones you get from the card box vendors on that same street. They plaster the smile and the chewing gum. I asked one of them why the chewing gum ? She said "so as to be recognized..."

Recognized ? Do you recognize any of them ? Most likely not. Why should you care, now that we've been "liberated"...

The US doesn't want them. Sweden charges them just to have a look at their emigration request. Canada can't afford them. Britain doesn't want to hear about them. Switzerland has its quota already full. Germany has enough of them...and so on.

Recognized ? Oh sure they can be recognized. Just notice the chewing gum, the card box, the paralysis, the leaks and the barefooted football player in the garbage dump... And these are only a few examples. I have tons more, but why should you care?

We are drinking, eating and breathing "liberation" daily...It's our daily bread,
"Father who is heaven give us today our daily bread..." Now we have it. Thank you very much.

The voices muffled and the tears silent. Wipe them with Dignity we say to ourselves...Those of us who still have some energy left, go around asking for money...You know money don't you ? Your little God. You must know all about money...

Please spare 20$ for this family. OK make it 10$. OK, make it whatever you can...

Wipe them tears with dignity and swallow the pride, let it slip down one's throat like a stone that lodges in one's stomach and remains there...a stone, a rock, a mountain...you've got to do something, you say to yourself.

So what about those 10$ Sir? It's urgent please. So and so is behind in the rent, so and so needs medication, so and so needs clothes, so and so needs food...

And one day, you make that visit, and the door closes in your face. You are considered another beggar...And you keep swallowing that stone and dry those tears with Dignity.

OK enough of that!

You dirty motherfuckers. Iraqis refugees are YOUR responsibility. YOU are responsible for them. By all laws and by all conventions, they fall under YOUR obligation.

Straight after the 1990-1991 Desert Storm - your Desert Farts, the crappy, corrupt institution called the United Nations was quick to set up a new "agency" called the UN Compensation Fund. They rented a whole fucking building and employed hundreds of staff. Do you know what their mission is ?

Their mission was/is to compensate every single motherfucker who was "slighted" by the invasion of that worthless dump called Kuwait.

Do you know what that means in practice ?

That meant that every single motherfucker could file a compensation claim. From the Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Indian grocer in Kuwait city, to the Israelis who were "traumatized", to the Filipino who had his glass window shattered, to the Kuwaitis themselves...

And hell no, it did not stop there...Until this very day, the UN compensation fund is fully operational, still cashing in money from Iraq.

Today and these are the latest news:

Kuwait will be cashing an extra 775 million $
Saudi Arabia - 148 million $
USA - 70 million$ (over and above what you mother fuckers have stolen and are still counting in New York)
Turkey - 23 million $

All of the above figures are extra figures - meaning that a good amount of cash in the billions has already been handed over to the "concerned parties".

This money will be taken from Iraqi oil exports.

As for the rat Iran, since 2003 the reparation money has not stopped. The Iraqi "government" transfers to Iran on a regular basis reparation money. Not to mention all the contracts given to that whore Iran, and the oil that this whore is pumping away for FREE from Basrah.

And what about Kawthar, Qutaiba, Sheereen, Rima, Hanan, Afaf, Marwan and the rest ?

Is there no UN compensation fund for them ? Who will pay the damage ? Who will restore them to basic humanity ?

Ah! No need, we are now "liberated."

O' Father who are in heaven give us today our daily bread...

Layla Anwar

The Iraqi officer I advise once said after months of frantically working to capture terrorists, "You need to just relax. You are here, so there will always be another terrorist to capture. Sit and drink some tea with me."

A Soldier's Story MAJOR BILL EDMONDS

For just a minute or two, step into my life. I am an American soldier in the Army Special Forces. I have just returned from a one-year tour of duty in Iraq, where I lived, shared meals, slept and fought beside my Iraqi counterpart as we battled insurgents in the center of a thousand-year-old city. I am a conflicted man, and I want you to read the story of that experience as I lived it. In the interest of security, I have omitted some identifying details, but every word is true.

Routine and Ritual

I wake in the cold and dark of each morning to the sound of a hundred different muezzins calling Muslim men and women to prayer. These calls reverberate five times per day throughout a city the size of San Francisco. Above this sound I also hear two American helicopters making their steady patrol over the rooftops of the city and the blaring horns of armored vehicles as they swerve through dense city traffic. As a combat adviser and interrogator, I find these contrasts very appropriate for the life that I now lead.

This morning, on the Iraqi base in which I live, I walk 100 feet from my bedroom to work and back again. These are the same 100 feet I will travel month after month for one year. During every trip I smile, put a hand to my heart, sometimes a hand to my head, and say to every passing Iraqi the religious and cultural words that are expected from a fellow human being. In Iraq, one cannot separate Islamic culture from the individual. They are intrinsically woven into the fabric of daily life, but for most Westerners, they seem abnormal. I sit in smoke-filled rooms and drink sugar-laden tea in small crystal glasses. I spray tobacco-scented air freshener, kiss cheeks three times or more, allow the Iraqi on the right to pass through the doorway first. I know never to inquire on the health of a wife or elder daughter. I even hold hands with other men.

I proclaim my submission to God and my relationship to reality by saying "God willing" when referring to any future event. I say "God bless you" every time someone takes a seat. I eat with my hands, standing up, taking food from communal bowls. I attend work meetings where socializing is always the first priority. I hear the expressions "upon my mustache" or "by my eyes" or "over my head"--signifying the most binding and heartfelt of oaths. One day, I ask an Iraqi friend how many relatives he has and he answers, "In the city, maybe a thousand."

I have slowly come to realize that in Islam, and in Iraq, every action is worship. Every single thing that a person does--not just prayer or the time spent in a mosque but every action--is in fact an act of veneration. So yes, many things are different here. Yet we all have become friends--good friends--in part because I am here; I honor them and their religion by going out of my way to show them respect. Not all Americans act this way.

Many Americans assume that if a person does not speak English, it implies a lack of intelligence or some mental simplicity. We usually speak up only when spoken to. We attend meetings to pass information in the most efficient ways possible; our goal is always to decrease time while not losing content. For most Americans, God is intensely personal and religious utterances are not considered appropriate in a group of strangers. Our society is established on the principle of separating religion from state. In America, tobacco is quickly becoming a social taboo, and most men do not hold hands. If we are the first to arrive at a door, we enter first. We go on dates to meet future spouses--this is a cultural activity that I try again and again to explain. Also, Americans are a pragmatic people. We calculate the merit of an action first by its utility. In Islam, such a philosophy is immoral, and this truth is clearly manifest in the current clash between the Muslim and the postmodern worlds. So yes, we are very different. Yet if I look closely, with eyes wide open, I see that we are in some ways very much alike.

I jogged this morning around the small Iraqi base where I live. It was 6:00 a.m. and mildly warm. I wore very revealing blue Nike running shorts with ankle socks while listening to Limp Bizkit on my iPod. I slowly passed a small group of Iraqis and they all just stared, unsmiling. As I came closer, with a huge smile spread across my face, I put my hand to my heart and said, "Peace be upon you all," (in Arabic of course) while gasping for air. They all, in unison,
completely changed and beamed smiles, waved, talked, gave me a thumbs-up and replied, "Peace be upon you."

Insurgents

On this small plot of land where I live, next to the Tigris River, in the very center of an Islamic metropolis, I help find and then interrogate terrorists alongside the Iraqi officer whom I advise and with whom I also live. We interrogate hundreds of suspected terrorists over many, many months. One of my responsibilities is to insure that prisoners are not abused. This I have done.

But for a year I have also been an observer of an immensely complicated situation. I am a soldier who fights alongside Iraqis, and I interact daily with and hear the words of Iraqi soldiers, civilians and insurgents alike. Through their eyes I see the strengths, foibles and faults of my military and culture.

Sometimes I wish for the return of my ignorance. If no one else can understand my distress, I hope other Americans who fought shoulder to shoulder with other cultures--the French, Filipino, the Nungs and Yards and tribesmen of Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia--will understand.

From my seat in a dark basement room I understand that many of those who terrorize have always hated the Americans. But being Muslim is definitely not a predisposition for violence; quite the opposite for most Iraqis.

Why is it that many have slowly transformed over three years from happily liberated American supporters, to passive supporters of the insurgency, to active fighters of the American "occupation"? "I love Americans but hate your military," says a college professor turned insurgent. "Americans have come here because you want our oil and because of your support of Israel. You bring democracy, but the Iraqi pays the price." These were the first words I heard from a man I will call Ibrahim.

The Iraqi Army had captured him. He was angry, and for the first time he was
sitting face to face with the American soldier whom he hates beyond reason. That was two weeks ago.

Yesterday, I put two red plastic chairs outside in the sun and spoke with him again. This time, I believe I am not the American soldier he has come to hate. This time I am "Mr. Bill," and it is now hard for him to hate me. I can see and sense his inner turmoil. For Ibrahim and for me, it is hard to hold on to the hate when the once-indistinct face becomes a real person. Later, he admits to having been deceived about the evil that is the American soldier. For two weeks I have spoken Arabic with him, started and ended every interaction with the required cultural and religious sayings, and demonstrated knowledge of his religion. For two weeks I have shown Ibrahim that I respect him as both an Iraqi and as a Muslim.

"It is how you act," he says, "and how we are treated that makes me fight. For many Iraqis this anger at you is just an excuse to kill for money or greed. But for most others, they truly feel they are doing what is right. But you give them this excuse; the American military gives them the excuse." So now terrorist leaders pretending to be pious Iraqis target this very common base anger, Iraqis fight and civilians raise their fists to salute the Holy Fighter.

"Two years ago I saw Abu Ghraib and what Americans did to women. I became an insurgent," whispers a man I call Kareem, another civilian turned insurgent.

"You come into our homes without separating the women and children, or asking the men politely if you may enter. Almost every hour of my life I hear some noise or see some sight of the American military. Soldiers talk with Iraqis only from behind a gun, from a position of power and not respect. Last week American soldiers got on a school bus and talked with all of the teenage girls. You had them take off their hijab so you could see their faces. You do not respect our women. This is the biggest of all problems of yours. You do not respect our women. How can we believe that Americans want to help when you do not even respect us or our faith?"

I later tell Kareem that these soldiers thought a person hiding a bomb was on the bus. This was obviously too little and too late. Perceptions are what count and word of American soldiers demanding to see the faces of Muslim women streamed from cellphone to cellphone across an entire city. Perhaps different from other past insurgencies fighting in different societies, within Iraq and over years, negative perceptions are what transform a citizen into an insurgency supporter and then into an insurgent. Now I drive throughout the crowded city alternating between shooting a machine gun and throwing Beanie-Babies to waving children. I think that at least the children are out in the streets and most are still waving. But even this hopeful sight is disappearing.

Last night the Iraqi Army captured Ibrahim's cell leader and brought the two together in the same small room. For Ibrahim, this was a very traumatic moment, for he saw that the pious Muslim man, whom he followed but had not met, was in fact a 27-year-old tattooed common criminal. Ibrahim began to weep when he realized he had been deceived. A greedy and immoral man who killed for money while pretending to be religious had skillfully manipulated Ibrahim's anger at Americans. Before Ibrahim was turned over to the Iraqi authorities, I saw him teaching soldiers to use their new office computer. He was helping them to type up his own written confession. But Ibrahim's transformation is an anomaly. Such a confluence of peaceful events does not often turn an insurgent away from the insurgency. Most insurgents continue to fight the hated American soldier whom they have never met. Their hope is that the American soldier will just go away.

Bursting Bubbles

I have slowly come to understand that if we are to succeed in Iraq, we must either change the way we perceive and treat those we want to help or we must disengage the great percentage of our military from the population. The Iraqi base where I now live was once a small American base. The anxiety and distress of American soldiers in years past are scratched in the ceiling over my bed.

"The mind is a terrible thing...," "keep a sharp look-out during your descent," "happiness is a temporary state of mind," "control is just an illusion" and "nothing is as it seems." Across the room, on another wall, next to another bed, are other words from another soldier.

They read, "My score in this War: Arabs=10, cars=10, houses=3."

American soldiers are angry and frustrated with Iraqis. Iraqis are angry and frustrated with Americans. Many Iraqis just want American soldiers to go away, and I struggle within myself not to agree. Day after day I observe the interactions of Americans with Iraqis and am often ashamed. I see that required classes given to all American soldiers on cultural sensitivity do not work; 100,000 or more American soldiers daily interacting, engaging and fighting Iraqis within their own society for more than three years will inevitably create a wellspring of citizen hostility. In this war, none of us can change who we fundamentally are.

American military culture interacts with Iraqi Islamic culture like a head-on collision. And massive deployments of American soldiers fighting a counterinsurgency now hurts more than it helps. When we focus on the military solution to resolve a social problem, we inevitably create more insurgents than we can capture or kill. As a consequence, real "Islamic terrorists" subverting their own tolerant religion will use this popular anger and sense of resentment to their advantage. As much as they hate and fear us, they also say that we cannot just leave the mess that we have made.

"I know the American military cannot now leave Iraq," says another captured insurgent whom I will call Muhammad. "If you did, we would all start fighting each other until one person killed enough enemies to come out on top. When I stop seeing your military shooting at civilians on our streets and I stop seeing Iraqi soldiers and policemen as your puppets, then I will stop fighting."

Muhammad may be naïve and living in a bubble of projected motivations and false perceptions. But his bubble burst when he was captured and plucked from an insular society. My own bubble burst when I was taken out of my society and put into Muhammad's. Military leaders tell us to "focus on training the Iraqi soldiers and policemen to fight, and do not fight the insurgency yourself." Yet if the citizen is angry with us, won't this anger just transfer to the very people we train and fight with? What if we are unintentionally assuring that the Iraqi soldiers and policemen will have someone to fight against if we leave?

The Iraqi civilian I speak with says that is so. In the eyes of many, there is now no difference between the American on patrol and the Iraqi policeman or soldier who is with the American on patrol. If the citizen believes that the American military is an "occupying power," won't he now perceive the Iraqi policeman or soldier as this occupier's puppet?

American soldiers do live within self-imposed bubbles of isolation. These are
called American bases and are where the greatest percentage of soldiers live and never leave. These bubbles are far different from the universe of Muhammad and his colleagues. We know that Muhammad's beliefs about who we are and what motivates us are mostly false. His first perceptions are defined by culture and religion, careful words of terrorist leaders, and a thousand channels of satellite television beamed into the homes of almost every Iraqi. It is then our behavior that contributes to these negative perceptions. Our self-imposed isolation and the citizens' perceptions may be all that the insurgency needs to continue and be successful.

I have come to realize that we isolate our soldiers from the societies in which we operate. We airlift and sealift vacuum-sealed replicas of America to remote corners of the world; once there, we isolate ourselves from the very people we are trying to protect or win over. An Iraqi once told me, "How you treat us must be like how African-Americans felt."

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Good-bye My Beloved Baghdad

Iraqi Armenian journalist and engineer Ara Ashjian bids Baghdad farewell:

I write these words while I say good-bye to you, my beloved Baghdad. I say good-bye while the pain and the grief tear my heart and fill my essence and feeling. You are the city which embraced my father and other Armenians who survived the Armenian Genocide in 1915 and provided them with shelter and means of living and comfort. In you I was born, grew up and finished my elementary, intermediate and secondary studies in the Armenian Private School.

Also in you, I dreamed and had my first childhood love in school. I graduated from the school, where I was ever superior, to enter your College of Engineering from which I had graduated as a constructional engineer to serve you through my specialty and to engage in your reconstruction. Then, I joined the compulsory military service during the Iraqi-Iranian war and completed my postgraduate study in 1988. During the study, I loved an Armenian young woman, who was a student at the same Department and broke off my relation after years, because she had left you and immigrated to the unknown world. After invading Kuwait in 1990, I served in the Army as a reservist and went out of it after the end of the Second Gulf war in 1991.

In you, my beloved Baghdad, I practiced activities in the Armenian Diocese and cultural associations and Iraqi cultural forums by giving lectures on the history of the Armenian people and Church, the Armenian Cause and interpreting the Bible. I also wrote articles, worked as a journalist in some of your newspapers and worked in the Embassy of Armenia, till the members of the mission left you before the US-UK campaign to invade you began in March 2003. I worked as a lecturer in the University and this was my history I made in you with great efforts which I was proud of and I dreamed to tell my children about in the future while being in you.

However, everything in you has changed, my beloved Baghdad, after you are afflicted with wounds and treachery of the friends and enemies from each side. You are bleeding, death is spread everywhere in you not excluding anyone and life became unbearable and kind of madness and suicide. You lost means of living and all kinds of public services.

Despite great difficulties I faced in you that lasted for more than a quarter century, beginning with the Iraqi-Iranian war, passing through the UN economic unjust sanctions and the invasion, I remained adhered to you like a baby adhered to his mother. However, I now may have lost patience and the ability to withstand after all my family members and relatives have left you and I remained alone with my sick mother and brother. Under these circumstances, I do not find anyone who aids me in taking care of them and the atmosphere around me is depressed and sad. So, I was forced to think of what I didn t think of before... I thought of separating from you, leaving behind my history which I made in you through long years and beginning a new history away from you.

However, my sick mother did not wish to leave you. She told all around her: I wish that my son bury me in Baghdad before leaving the city. She wanted to be buried close to my deceased father to be loyal to him even in death. She also felt that her sick body would not endure the hardships of the long way away from you. Her wish was fulfilled and she passed away fifty days before leaving you. My deceased mother faced her end fearlessly and even she had prepared the new clothes that she would wear when being shrouded years ahead! Your soil, my beloved Baghdad , contains now the remains of my beloved precious mother, beside the remains of my father and sister that will increase the pain of being away from you. I kept taking care of my father, sister and finally of my mother during their well-being and sickness and they all passed away satisfied with me.

However, what will relieve my pain is that I am leaving you to beloved Yerevan, which is in my dreams since my childhood, but you are the beloved city which lived in and with me. But, from now on, the situation will be reversed; the beloved Yerevan will be the city where I ll live and you ll be the beloved city in my dreams. Your wounds will heal; you ll restore your charming image and will remain in my heart forever.

The last place I visited before leaving you, my beloved Baghdad, was the site of the house I was born in the street of your Colonel Abdul Karim Qasim. He led in you the 14th of July 1958 revolution against the royal regime, declared the republican regime and led Iraq for less than five years (1958-1963).

I took a long look at the site of the house which is now a private hospital and sat in a restaurant in the opposite side. I ate my launch there to spend more time looking at the site, although the restaurant was not offering my favorite meals!!

I remembered, my beloved Baghdad, what my deceased father and mother told me about the circumstances that surrounded my birth in this house. My birthday (November 8th 1960) came across martial law declared because of the unstable political and security conditions prevailed in Iraq then. My father was standing in the street in front of our house at late night waiting for a taxi car to take my mother to a hospital to give birth to me. The Colonel Abdul Karim Qasim, who used to return from the meetings of the Cabinet after midnight to his house opposite to our house in the street that bears his name so far, passed by. He asked my father, whom he knew as a neighbor, about the reason of waiting in the street at that late time of night. After knowing the reason, the Colonel ordered his guards to take my father and mother by his own car to the hospital where I was born in the six o clock in the morning!

Taking a look at the site, I also remembered my childhood and youth years I spent in this house for more than a quarter century. My family sold the house to a group of well-known doctors and surgeons who erected a new hospital at the location of the house which became a widely known private hospital in Baghdad.

Good-bye, my beloved Baghdad These are the most difficult moments in the life of your pious son; the moments of separation from you. I ll miss you; miss your immortal Tigris River, my home and life in you and the kindness of your people. I ll keep praying for you so you recover your health and bloom. During your history, you proved the calamities and the difficulties did not ever affect you and you were soon rising to take your fitting status.

Good-bye, my beloved Baghdad, you are in me forever despite the distance that apart us. Separation from you is difficult and bitter. May God help me to bear it.

Good-bye, my beloved Baghdad

Ara S. Ashjian

Baghdad, Iraq

Iraq

Feb 13, 2008 Treasure of Baghdad A Crime We'll Never Forget

On this day but Seventeen years ago, hundreds of innocent Iraqi civilians were hiding from the American terror bombardments in a bomb shelter in Amiriya neighborhood west of Baghdad. They didn’t know that the crows were hovering over the building. The children were playing, women were chatting and praying for safety and the elderly were either reading or praying too. Then, a sudden shock, huge fire and then everyone melted on the floor and the walls.

The shelter was destroyed with the people hiding in it by two American laser-guided "smart bombs" on 13 February 1991 during the Gulf War, killing more than 408 civilians.

Seventeen years have passed and that tragedy never left Iraqis’ minds. It never made them forget the brutality and the crime. Seventeen years ago, the whole world stood silent. The world let America lead them to make the remaining living Iraqis they didn’t kill starve for twelve years. Twelve years of deprivation of food and medicine. Twelve years of thousands of tragedies.

And now after seventeen years, the tragedy has crossed the shelter’s walls and entered every civilian's house.

To the souls of the martyrs of the Amriya shelter who were murdered on the same hands that murdered Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I still remember you and will never forget you or forget what happened to you. Treasure of Baghdad

IRAQ

Khalid Jarrar is an Iraqi-Palestinian student who lived in Iraq from July 1991 through July 2005 and has recently moved to Jordan . Khalid maintains a blog, Secrets in Baghdad, where he writes about ordinary Iraqis and daily life in post-war Iraq.

Khalid Jarrar LEAVING

april 2006

Once I got to the Iraqi borders, I panicked when I saw the numbers of Iraqis leaving, as if there were no tomorrow — huge numbers waiting in long, endless lines. It could take you 48 hours at the Iraqi-Jordanian border to have your passport stamped and your car checked. It's a scene that I wish I had never seen.

I moved to Iraq fifteen years ago. I was so young and I didn't know much about it, but I was so eager to explore the country I later started referring to as "home."

A few months ago, I had to leave — a decision I had thought I would never take —because it became simply too dangerous to stay in anymore. Since the 2003 war and the beginning of the occupation, the security situation, among other things, started deteriorating.

"Divide and conquer" is perhaps the oldest trick in the book and the occupation has been using it in every way since the very beginning. The US occupation's strategy was to support Shiites and Kurds and favor them over Sunnis in forming an Iraqi government, and, in the same time, apply all possible kinds of oppression and attacks against Sunnis. The Occupation hoped, in this way, to create internal clashes between different sects in order to keep everyone too busy to care about the occupation or demand its withdrawal.

Iraqis were no longer Iraqis; they became either Sunnis, Shiites, or Kurds — in the media, in the political process, in the news, and everywhere. Since the war, when people ask me, "Where are you from?" and I say that I am from Iraq, another question automatically follows: "Are you Sunni, Shiite, or Kurdish?"

An attitude that was totally adopted by mainstream media in the West, making it look like a fact that there is no such thing as Iraq but rather only a number of groups fighting on its soil, a soil that happens to cover one of the largest oil reserves in the world, a soil that had one of the oldest civilizations in history.

So here is why I left Iraq: For no crime at all but being a Sunni, I was arrested by the ministry of interior's intelligence body and detained for a couple of weeks. I made my way out of detention after they couldn't prove anything against me and couldn't make me confess of crimes that I hadn't done: They weren't able to make me say the name of "my terrorist cell" or "where its funding came from." I was labeled "terrorist" the moment I entered there, even before they started to interrogate me. But as I said, since they couldn't get any information out of me, they freed me for a few thousand dollars.

After paying them what they wanted, I left the prison, and under threats from them and other militias, I left Iraq.

During the days I spent on the seventh floor of the interior ministry, which is where all the "terror" cases are handled, I got to see what sectarianism really means and how innocent people are arrested, tortured, beaten, killed, and labeled "terrorists" —for no crime but being Sunnis. Raids on Sunni neighborhoods result in arresting large numbers of men; practically any male between 18 and 40 can be arrested; and usually after a few days some of these bodies are found around Baghdad or in dumpsters, tortured to death or executed.

There is one big, well-organized gang ruling Iraq now, in control of the ministry of interior, the police, and the so-called national guard (in addition to other ministries) — all owned by or affiliated with extremists coming from Iran, the Daawa Party, and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). These are the parties in power now, and they want to make sure that everyone in the country understands this message. By "cooperating" with the Occupation, they get to do literally anything they want.

The terrible security situation led to the appearance of these NGGs, the name I gave to Non-Governmental Gangs, which are now in their golden days, kidnapping innocents, hijacking cars, and stealing personal and public property.

Huge numbers of people are unemployed due to administrative mistakes made by the Occupation, and if you want to get a job in the public sector, you'd better have a good recommendation from the closest Dawwa Party, SCIRI, or Sadr offices; otherwise, don't count on your degree or resume — they hardly matter.

A big mess — that's how the situation is in Iraq. Escaping has become the only option left for so many Iraqis.

Below is the account of R, a 24-year-old Iraqi woman who asked me not to publish her name. She is still in Baghdad but we correspond via e-mail.

During the last year, Sunnis were not sure whether it was a good idea to leave Iraq because everyone believed that the current SCIRI/Daawa government was interim and that they would be gone by the next elections. Now that Sunnis feel that this government is permanent, they are thinking about leaving the country.

This is the case with my family. We do not consider ourselves Sunni or Shiite; we consider ourselves educated Iraqi Muslims. For educated Iraqis, this situation is unbearable — not because Shiites are in power, but because the people currently in power want to spread sectarian differences and Iraqis are not accustomed to this.

Sunnis feel it is unsafe for them to remain in the country — and especially in Baghdad — because they are being persecuted by the Badr and Sadr militias simply for being Sunnis. With the help of the US occupation forces, Sunnis are being rounded up by the hundreds and thrown into detention and sometimes assassinated — their bodies found later in areas outside of Baghdad.

Now that educated Iraqis — Sunnis, Shiites and Christians — know that the current government will be here for at least another four years, they are trying to find a way out. For Christians, church groups are arranging for their immigration to countries like Australia, Holland, etc. But Muslims are seeking refuge in countries like Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Syria, and other Arab countries.

For people who insist that leaving the country isn't the answer, their children are being abducted and they are being terrorized by people from the ministry of interior. Many educated Iraqis get threatened when they decide they would like to remain in the country and are eventually forced to leave their homes and jobs for the more secure situation of a neighboring country.

I also still correspond with AnaRki13, a 23-year-old Iraqi blogger who spoke to me about brain drain, or "brain migration" as Iraqi newspapers call it in Arabic. Here is an excerpt of an e-mail he sent me:

Not so much a migration as a forced exodus. Scientists, engineers, doctors, architects, writers, poets, you name it — everybody is getting out of town.

Why? Simple: 1.There is no real job market in Iraq. 2. Even if you have a good job, chances are good you'll get kidnapped or killed. It's just not worth it staying here. Sunni, Shiite, or Christian — everybody, we're all leaving, or have already left.

One of my friends keeps berating me about how I should love this country, the land of my ancestors, where I was born and raised; how I should be grateful and return to the place that gave me everything. I always tell him the same thing: "Iraq, as you and me once knew it, is lost. What's left of it, I don't want."

I know so many families (all or in part) that have left, prepared to leave, or want to leave. Staying equals danger: Kidnappings, threats, and, for some, persecution.

Now in Iraq, you cannot be Iraqi. You can be either Sunni or Shiite. And it rips my heart in two.

The most famous doctors and university professors have already left the country because many of them, including ones I knew personally, were assassinated or killed, and the rest got the message — and got themselves jobs in the west, where they were received warmly and given high positions. Other millions of Iraqis, just ordinary Iraqis, left and are leaving — without plans and with much hope.

In Jordan, for example, the government refuses to give official numbers of Iraqis in the country. According to unofficial estimates, there are about a million Iraqis in Jordan and another million in Syria. And although being a legal resident in Jordan for Iraqis requires keeping $150,000 in a bank for a whole year without using them, the estimated numbers of apartments bought by Iraqis since the war exceeds 50,000, let alone the huge numbers of Iraqis who can't afford to buy a house and have to stay illegally in the country, like Marwan, an Iraqi pharmacist I met in Jordan. He is working part-time in a pharmacy in Amman. When I talked to him, he repeated what I had heard before: threats by Shiite militias, the bad security situation, no job opportunities, etc. All Iraqis I talked to in Jordan said the same thing and they are now hoping to get a visa to any country that welcomes them, hoping to settle down and be able to live their lives normally, something they lost hope to be able to have in Iraq for the time being.

Many reasonable voices from both sides, Sunnis and Shiites, are calling for peaceful co-existence in Iraq, like Iraqis lived for hundred of years. There are calls for unity among Iraqis in order to accelerate the process of ending the occupation, restore stability, and improve the economic situation, so that Iraqis stop leaving Iraq, and so that the ones that left can come back. A recent poll conducted in Iraq shows that 70% of Iraqis favor setting a timetable for US forces to withdraw, which indicates that Iraqis are aware that the real source of danger that threatens their present and future is the foreign, illegal occupation.

Iraqis who left Iraq in millions might have different destinations and plans, different degrees and financial capacities, but they all share one thing for sure: They are all waiting for the day their country is free so that they can return back to their loved ones, to their homes, to the Tigris and the Euphrates.

Najma, another young Iraqi blogger living in the city of Mosul in the north of Iraq told me of two of her uncles who left Iraq, one this year, the other more than 10 years ago: "[They] both do not want to come back. I don't blame them, and as much as I'd like them to come back to work for Iraq other than whomever they're working for now, I want them to stay there, and would flee out as soon as I can myself, simply because I hate it here."