Christmas in Baghdad

Interesting times in Iraq. The question of whether the British operation against the serious crimes unit in Basra was right or wrong should exist independently of whether invading Iraq was right or wrong. I was dead against invasion in 2003 but think it was, on balance, probably right that they took down the station last week. This is part of Operation Sinbad to try and root out the worst elements of the security forces in Iraq. I understand that western troops and private security companies have committed many disgraces, some reported but most not, but the simple fact is (probably) that dozens of people were saved from torture and execution by this operation. Isn't that a good enough end in itself? Taking down the building itself I think was right as well, why not remove what for many in Basra would have been a symbol of corruption and murder.

I was surprised to see Saddam's death sentence upheld so soon. They weren't bound by the constitution to issue an appeal decision within any time limit, so they could have stuck it on the shelf for a couple of months. Maliki's keen as mustard to get Saddam hanged so I wouldn't be surprised to see the sentence carried out within the next week. Some of my Iraqi friends are very, very worried that this is really going to make the violence escalate. Of course there's a perverse asymmetry to this - to remove a negative symbol in the shape of the police station in Basra might well improve things down there but removing one in the form of Saddam in Baghdad is going to lead to more death and destruction.

Aaaanyway. Christmas in Baghdad has been great fun. Hopefully I'll have a couple of days off before the round of New Year parties kicks in. My liver needs a break.

Here's wishing you and yours a safe and happy Christmas, and all the best for 2007 wherever you are.

S

Back to Baghdad

It's never easy flying Iraqi Airways. I had problems with them when I left Baghdad to go on leave and was flying back in from Kurdistan the other day. We boarded the flight 2 hours after it was scheduled to depart, which was fine. We expected that and 2 hours isn't too bad for this airline. So then we sat there for a while and nothing happened until they asked everyone to get back off the plane again to check the luggage. They'd lined all the bags up on the tarmac and we had to go and identify them to get them put back in the hold. Nothing to do with security measures - just plain incompetence. It puts you in the mindset that you are back in Iraq though, so it's not all bad.



Being back isn't that bad, though it's much tougher to come back after leave than it is to come here in the first place. You get used to normal life and seeing friends and family again and then it's back to this madness. One of our guys' brother was shot and killed 3 days ago, the cleaner whose husband was kidnapped (and has now disappeared altogether) had a brother murdered 2 weeks ago, and another guy saw someone dragged out of his car and shot in the head yesterday outside his front door. This place is much worse than it was when I left and the sense of fear is palpable. The main obstacle for security is the government. They are a total disaster for the people of Iraq. Many Iraqis think even talking to Syria and Iran won't make any difference now. Maliki and his corrupt, partisan government should be overthrown as soon as possible. I wouldn't lose too much sleep if they were kidnapped tomorrow.

As for today's suicide bombing that killed over 50 people looking for work and injured 3 times as many, it will be blamed on Sunnis. I'm not so sure though because Iraqis aren't usually suicide bombers - Arabs are. So my guess is the suicide bomber this morning was Syrian or in any case a foreign terrorist. Not that that will stop the Shiites going on a sectarian death squad jolly though.

In other news gunmen stole USD 1 million from a bank truck in Baghdad. That probably translates into a lot of rockets, so soon, in a sense, it will be raining money.

Something didn't smell right......

This is pretty funny. Lighting your farts when you're a kid is one thing, but this takes the cake. Presumably her farts didn't smell like sulphur in the first place...

So the long awaited and much leaked Baker report came out yesterday. Already Bush is ruling out direct talks with Iran and Syria. Well clearly he's got it right so far, so why follow the advice of the Baker Commission? If it wasn't so tragic it would almost be funny. Any plan that doesn't involve Iran and Syria is doomed to failure. The Iraqi police and army are so corrupt that without Iranian and Syrian involvement they will never be able to function as they should. The big difference between the Iraqi army and the army in Kurdistan is that the former are easily bought but the latter are not. You wouldn't ask prisoners to police the streets of the US or the UK, so why do it here? Simply embedding another 20,000 troops with the Iraqi security services won't make a blind bit of difference if you're not getting the neighbours involved. The borders are more leaky than England's middle order so unless you contain the problem you're always treading water. If the Iranian and Syrian borders are sealed and the weapons and terrorists stop coming in, then you can at last begin to deal with a finite quantity of shit. But Bush seems more content to piss in the wind. He must rate the size of his bladder...

A very different Iraq

I'm in Kurdistan at the moment, which is broadly the northern part of Iraq. A brief history lesson. In 1992 Kurdistan (or the Federal Region of Kurdistan to give it the full name) became semi autonomous. It has its own constitution and has passed some of its own laws, although these are not significantly different from Iraqi law. One difference is that laws passed by the CPA in 2003 and 2004 are not recognised here as they were not legislated through the regional assembly (parliament). Between 1992 and 1997 all sorts of shit was hitting the fan as rival factions battled for power, being the PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan) and KDP (Kurdish Democratic Party). The PUK was led by Jalal Talibani and the KDP by Massoud Barzani. These days they are President of Iraq and Kurdistan respectively. After the imposition of the UN's Oil for Food program in 1997 and intervention by the US, things calmed down and they've been working alongside ever since.

Being here is bizarre - I don't even feel like I am in Iraq. Life here is normal. There are no bombs, rockets, mortars, helicopters or kidnappings. There is no razor wire. Kids go to school and walk down the street freely, restaurants do a bustling trade and there are hundreds of them, many run by people who fled Baghdad. So yeah, it really is hard to believe this is Iraq. I'm not looking forward to going back to Baghdad this time. I'm sure that at some point in 2007, maybe in Spring or Summer, even the IZ is going to be getting too dangerous. So I will hunker down in Baghdad for the next couple of months but after that I'll have to either come up to Kurdistan or get out of Iraq altogether. Not much use making fistfuls of dollars if your fists have been blown off or you're dead.

Bye bye Bolton

I was happy to see that Bush has now given up trying to permanently appoint John Bolton as the US ambassador to the UN. Bolton has been doing that job for over a year, but only on an interim basis as his appointment hadn't been formally approved by the US Senate. The Bush administration has shown total contempt for the UN and Bolton's presence on its behalf was a symptom of that. Bolton was a critic of the UN and he was sent to "shake it up" which really means to bully other members into approving things that were in the best interests of the US. Given his public criticism of the UN, even before he was appointed temporarily, he was the very last person Bush should have been thinking of, but that shows the mentality of the Bush administration. The UN does have its faults, but to seek to undermine it further is in nobody's interest. International law does matter, as the clear breach of it in invading Iraq has shown. When countries start disregarding it, as the US and UK did in 2003, who are they to turn round and object when other countries do? So yeah, laters Bolton.

Back again

I've been out of Iraq for a while and am now back. I caught up with a lot of people who mean a lot to me in various places and had the best holiday I could have hoped for. While I was away I felt strangely detached from what was happening here, but maybe that was no bad thing. When you're here, the things those people are doing to each other start to grind you down so it's good to get out and have some normality for a while. Of course the Iraqis don't have that luxury. Being away made me really take stock of where I'm at and it was really hard to come back. I'm not sure I'll be here longer than another 12 months now, though circumstances on that ground may well mean I'm not even here that long. I have been sounded out for another job here which pays more and is doing something that would probably be more constructive for this country than what I have been doing so far, which has been a mixed bag. What I've been doing isn't counter-productive for Iraq, but I have always felt like I wasn't doing what I came here to do, or at least to the extent I'd like. So we will see. I should know in the next few days whether I will be changing.

So.... what's been going on the last few weeks? There was that horrific day in which a couple hundred Shiites met their maker courtesy of a series of car bombs, and a couple of days ago some more car bombs killed another 51. The number of horribly disfigured people must be at least 500. Religion's a strange old thing. The things people do to each other, and all in the name of this god they've been brainwashed into believing in since birth. A book I was reading on holiday had a quote that interested me, something along the lines of "the more a religion tends towards monotheism, the more barbaric it becomes". My own view is that religion is a problem full stop. On a small, personal scale it can help people in times of need and give them hope. On a large scale however it's a disaster for the human race. Look at history, and the present for that matter - when people stop thinking of themselves (and others) simply as people, and move towards narrower groups based on religion or race (which often overlap), their ideals start to conflict and all hell breaks loose. When you look at black and white clips of WWII and see human beings slaughtering each other you wonder what the hell was that all for. And on it goes. Religion is, for me, a way of the human race absolving ourselves of responsibility for our actions (the theory being that we'll all be judged by a higher power at the end of the day). Moral values such as not stealing exist totally independently of religion, so quite why anyone needs to have a god to adhere to those virtues is beyond me. If you're religious, then good luck to you. Just don't try and convert me.

Iraq's government is in a bit of a mess with Sadr's lot pulling out in protest about Maliki's meeting with Bush. I will try and get hold of a link to the press conference they held - I didn't see it as I was probably on a beach somewhere, but apparently Bush was just plain embarrassing. What's new, yeah I know, but apparently he was off the scale of muppetry. More later.