“No one will go in before being searched...”

Like everyday, Ahmed was going back home after a long day at work. Since college and since he started his job as a government employee in 2004, he did not have any problem in transportation. Most Iraqi middle and working class people use government buses and private minibuses for their transportation.

Lined up near the old non-functional traffic lights in Bab al-Muadham district in central Baghdad, KIA minibuses were empty. Angry people, including Ahmed, argued with the drivers to let them in. “No one will go in before being searched,” one driver told the mob. Men and women disagreed first but later surrendered to the driver’s insistence to save their lives. There might be a terrorist putting on an explosive belt or carrying a bag with a bomb ready to cut the people’s body into pieces.

As it is known for everyone, Iraqis’ life has changed from bad to worse since the U.S.-led war. Now, even buses become one of the hundred things Iraqis fear. Distrust becomes something stuck with Iraqis wherever they go. Everyone started suspecting each other. If someone parks a car in the street, nearby shop or house owners ask him to take it away. It may be a car bomb.

Ahmed started to be worried all the time. Like all Iraqis, he is unsafe at all. “Wherever I go, I feel I am going to die. Even going to work became as hard as getting a job,” he told me once.

Today, a bomb planted inside a minibus exploded in Baghdad's Shiite Sadr City neighborhood, killing at least two people and wounding six.

In addition to bombs put inside the buses, car bombs are also fatal and one of the daily threats people may face. In last August, at least 43 people died and 76 were wounded in triple car bomb explosions in central Baghdad. Two of the blasts went off within 10 minutes of each other at the busy Nahdha bus station. The third blast happened on the road to a nearby hospital, Kindi, some 15 minutes later, just as victims of the first two attacks were being brought in.

On December 08, 2005, a suicide bomber boarded a packed bus as it was pulling out of the same bus station, Nahdha, and detonated an explosive belt, killing at least 30 civilians, mostly women and children. Police said the death toll was especially high because the blast triggered secondary explosions in gas cylinders stored at a nearby food stall. At least 25 people were wounded in the attack.

Last Tuesday, a bomb hidden in a minibus exploded near one of the offices of the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Kamaliya neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding three, police said.

Despite the above mentioned incidents, there are no serious efforts to put an end to this phenomenon. Security forces should be guarding the entrances and exits of the public bus stations to prevent any such attacks.

However, people always try to have a better life by tipping off the security forces of any suspected thing. Today, a group of people noticed an anonymous car parked inside the main bus station in Baghdad's famous Shiite neighborhood of Kadhimiya. They called the police who came hurriedly to see if the vehicle was a car bomb or not. Bravely, they defused the bomb they found in it and saved dozens of innocents’ lives.

baghdadtreasure@gmail.com

Sanctioning whom?

Everyone knows that after Saddam’s invasion to Kuwait in 1990 and his later withdrawal, the Security Council imposed severe economic sanctions on Iraq, including a full trade embargo barring all imports from and exports to the country.

On 6 August 1990, Iraqis started the 12 years of suffering, to starve and struggle for food and medicine. They had to suffer because the west’s former spoiled puppet, whose birthday is today, invaded Kuwait.

Most of yesterday’s top news on the Arab Satellite channel was about the embargo of the US and European countries imposed on Palestine. “The health situation is deteriorating day after day with the US and European countries’ recent decisions to cut their financial aids to the Palestinian people,” the news headlines said. This came as a collective punishment on the Palestinian population for democratically choosing their own government.

The situation in Palestine reminded me with how we had to suffer for twelve years from a brutal embargo imposed on people who did not have any fault but the fact that they were ruled by one of the worst dictators on earth.

In the period from 1991 to 2003, we didn’t feel but to hate the mute international community which agreed on punishing a nation’s people instead of its regime. Dozens of countries supported the victimizing resolution against the Iraqi people. They did not punish the dictator. Instead, they punished the people whom he ruled with an iron fist.

Saddam did not suffer, neither his gang whom he appointed in all fields of life. He took everything. In fact, the embargo was in his benefit as he used it as an excuse to rob the income of the local industries and say that there was no import and export to the goods, simply because there is an embargo. He and his ugly family, like his ugly daughter who showed up on Arabiya on her father’s fall anniversary, enjoyed the best kind of life any human being dreamt of. But what about the people? They were crippled. They had to work twice a day, they had to die unwillingly out of shortage in medicine and food, they had to face the financial problems by themselves while the whole world was watching silently.

A cousin of mine suffered a special and rare kind of Rheumatism. As far as I remember, it is called “Blood Rheumatism”. Due to the lack of medicine during the embargo period, she had to suffer a lot as the drug did not exist in Iraq. My aunt, who is a widow, had to sell all her jewels and gold and sometimes some of the house’s furniture to buy the medicine from outside Iraq. She couldn’t afford it every time she needed it. Eventually it became a chronic disease that will accompany her till the rest of her life.

This is one of the hundreds of thousands of similar and maybe worse cases that Iraqis faced during the embargo period because of a mistake they did not commit.

TV stations showed how pharmacies were empty and how hospitals were filled with patients without medicine to heal them with in Palestine. The images reminded me with the same pictures that we used to see and hear for 12 years. The Palestinian people are being punished because the west doesn’t like the government they chose. Is it logical? The US and Europe always call for democracy. The Palestinains chose the ones whom they felt will best represent them. Is it accepted? Why do these countries repeat the same thing? Does the west know that the leaders of Hamas and Fateh are enjoying the palaces and the fancy life while the people are the ones who are suffering? It is almost like what happened in Iraq for 12 years. How do you expect people love you and cooperate with you while you are the using the meanest way to kill them? How did you expect Iraqis to like you and welcome you while you were the ones who punished them instead of punishing the real perpetrator of invading a country you worship for its oil?

The punishment imposed on people does not fix the problem; it increases it. It turns the people against those who are punishing them for things they were not responsible for.

The new Iraq-like images of the Palestinians starving and dying in hospitals will be seen again for other peoples like the Iranians and Syrians due to the US pressure on the UN to impose sanctions. The real governors of these countries will continue enjoying the fancy life leaving the people die in hundreds of thousands. Do you think Bashar Asad or Najad will suffer if sanctions are imposed on their countries?

Let the world continue being silent. It seems they are bored with the Hollywood movies and now want something live to watch. Enjoy the show… it seems it will never end.

Banner

As my friend S. was driving in Adhamiya, he had to stop at an Iraqi army checkpoint. When the soldiers were searching the car, S. noticed this banner. It says “No Iranian, Persian, Solaghist Police are allowed in Adhamiya”. The banner was signed by the people of Adhamiya…

Clips from the Iraqi Reality Show

Among dozens of weeping women and men, Um Mohammed pushed away the weepers and sobbed at her 17-year-old son’s blood and the remaining of his flesh. With unforgotten grief, she was crying hysterically. She was left with two wounded daughters, a newly handicapped son and a cheerless father.

Um Mohammed is my friend’s aunt who lives in Baghdad’s western most disastrous, dangerous and violence-plagued areas, Khadhra. Like all the people living there, Um Mohammed’s family wasn’t spared the bombings and the attacks in a completely lawless neighborhood where armed men move freely like ants.

Two weeks ago, a mortar fell over their house and landed in their daughters’ room wounding the two of them. A week later, another bomb landed in the living room where her 12-year-old son was watching television at night, wounding him seriously. This mortar led to cut one of his legs and some burns on his body. But the third mortar that fell four days ago was fatal. It killed the eldest son, Mohammed.

Mohammed was one of the Iraqi teenagers that had no other place to go to but to stay locked either in their houses or neighborhood. One day, he was with a friend filling their generator with fuel. Electricity absence continues. After they finished, they decided to stand at the main gate of the house. While chatting, the mortar fell, killing him immediately and seriously wounding his friend.

With tears falling, my friend narrated how the situation looked like when he and his family went to his aunt’s house. It has been three years since he went last time to that fallen part of Baghdad. His aunt, he said, lost conscious several times, her daughters were weeping all the time and her handicapped son was lying in bed with wounds from the previous mortar while the father was receiving the people who came for condolences.

“It was scary,” my friend said of the road to Khadhra. “It is dead. There is no life there,” he added. Last Friday was the first day of the 3-day funeral. The victim’s family held the funeral in a traditional funeral tent in front of the house. My friend said they had to attend the funeral before sunset. It’s so risky to drive there after sunset.

We hear such incidents almost everyday. Whoever we see tells us the bad news, simply because there is no good news. “Someone is killed, another is kidnapped, X was robbed, Y was beheaded, a roadside bomb went off, a car bomb exploded”… blablabla….

Few days ago, my sister visited us. Like all other Iraqis, most of the news she had was about how her husband’s family live these days. My brother-in-law’s cousin’s 4-month-old son was wounded by a stray bullet from nearby clashes. My sister said they were sleeping when the clashes erupted in Adhamiya last week in the early morning. One of the bullets reached the small bed of the son. His mother was about to lose her mind when she found her baby bleeding in his bed. Unable to take him to the hospital immediately, the grieving mother had to wait weeping until the clashes were over. They finally took him to the hospital where he had to have a surgery to take out the bullet which, thank God, did not hurt his organs. The family, like many other Iraqis, decided to leave the country. “My son and husband are the only things that I care about now,” she told my sister who visited her few days ago.

Do you think that this is the end? Of course, not. The latest thing I heard was that a relative of my brother-in-law was threatened to be killed unless he leaves his job as a government employee in the electricity ministry. Of course, he can’t quit his job but he had to leave his house and buy another one in another neighborhood.

These are few clips from our Iraqi reality show. This is how we start and end our day.

The New Fashion Brought to Iraq

In 1999, I was a freshman in college. Living in a former secular country, most Iraqis had no difference in dealing with each other. In college, I had a wonderful group of friends, males and females. Our group consisted of two males and two females.

I have to say that those days we spent at college were the best in my life. As a young man, I couldn’t continue to enjoy this period of life as I am supposed to. The war and the occupation destroyed my dreams and killed the vivid spirit of the youth inside me and the ones in my age, males and females.

My female friends did not put on scarf, like most Iraqi female students before the war. They did not even believe in putting it on.

Every year, there was a graduation celebration in colleges and universities marking the end of four-year undergraduate studies. University students decorate their colleges and sections with roses and colorful ribbons, female students dress up like models with their hair playing in the fresh air, and male students compete on who is going to dress more elegantly to look handsome. Female and male students gather according to their sections and hand in hand, they all dance on the loud DJ music.

Once, we were invited to attend a graduation party in the University of Technology. My group and some other female and male friends joined us to party. While we were walking, an apparently female student, putting on a black Burqa- a fuller version of Abaya- and a pair of black gloves, passed by. All of us laughed out loud. She was Yemeni, we discovered. “Oh my God,” said one of my female friends. “Why do they accept having such students in our universities? She is all covered. How can she read?”

Iraqi women did not believe in putting burqa. It wasn’t even in their dictionary. When we saw women wearing it, we said they were not Iraqis. They might be either Yemenis or probably from one of the Arab Gulf countries. However, some Iraqi women believe in putting the ordinary scarf, especially in religious areas like holy Najaf and Karbala. Most women there wear the scarf in devotion to God or to follow the traditional teachings of Islam.

This no longer exists. After the U.S.-led occupation to Iraq, religious parties brought by the occupier from neighboring Iran and from other countries imposed their own understanding of the scarf on the secular society. They started forcing women to wear scarves directly and indirectly.

Women, who joined these “religious” and political parties or trends, started the new trend of “religious fashion”: Wearing Burqa and gloves to hide their faces and hands. Not only this, they started giving lectures to the newly joined female members to make them spread the idea of wearing hijab and burqa.

A colleague of mine emailed me a disgusting photo of how this issue is changing the shape of the Iraqi women who once were ones of the most fashionable women in the world in former cosmopolitan cities like Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul. I was so disgusted when I saw the photo. Inside me, I was shouting “Nooooooo. It shouldn’t be like this. We were not like this. Enough distortion and abuse to the women.”

This disaster continues. The Parties’ TV stations are doing the same thing. Iraqi Islamic Party’s Baghdad Sunni channel and SCIRI’s Al-Furat Shiite channel introduce their programs with fully-scarfed anchors to make the people get used to their ugly faces.

The new dictators of the “new” Iraq are doing things that Iraq’s former dictator did not do. As 24 Steps to Liberty said in his latest entry: “When they invaded Iraq, they didn’t have an already-formed Iraqi government to take place after Hussein’s was toppled… Their only advisors were Iraqis who’ve never been to Iraq in the last 40 years at least.”

These puppets came with their hatred to impose their masters’ orders as to make the first step to fulfill their dream of forming a religious state replacing the secular one once ruled by Saddam.

Update to Adhamiya clashes:

This morning, I woke up on the sounds of the shootings and explosions rather than the sound of my alarm. “Nothing new,” I said within myself. I took a shower, had my breakfast while the sound of the daily shootings was mixed with the songs of Fayrouz, the Lebanese famous singer which I listen to when I have breakfast everyday.

As usual, my mother insisted that I don’t go to work and as usual, I refused. Eventually, I left to work while the sound of heavy shooting was still continuous.

The clashes erupted in Adhamiya this morning at 7 a.m. after a quite night. A friend of mine who works at a government institution in Waziriya near Adhamiya said that he saw at least two armed men disguised in kaffiyas and carrying RPJs on his way to work, specifically in Raghiba Khatoon neighborhood, near Adhamiya. He also said he saw at least three police pick up trucks with dead bodies covered with blood, some where in police uniform and others were covered with winter blankets.

Another friend who lives near Nida mosque near Adhamiya has just emailed me. He wrote, “Heavy shooting is being heard near my Neighborhood ( Near Al-Nida’a Mosqe) since the early hours of the morning ( especially at 7 a.m ) and till now. You can still, hear rounds of shots in the far distance and lots of sirens. The sounds of shooting suggest that it is coming from a heavy caliber Machine Guns ( BKCs and up)”

I will keep you posted with anything new comes up…

Fierce clashes in Adhamiya

As usual, I couldn’t sleep last night. It was warm and of course, there was no electricity to turn on the fans. But what made me unable to sleep wasn’t the hot weather. It was the clashes that broke out in central Adhamiya. This time the shooting wasn’t as every day’s. It is continuous and accompanied by heavy sounds of explosions.

Last night’s fierce clashes erupted in central Adhamiya started at 1 a.m. when shootings and sounds of explosions broke out the silence of the night. Thank God that I don’t live in the center of the neighborhood. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to read this entry. I might be either killed or jailed in my house.

These clashes have never stopped until this moment. When I left to work, I was so worried. My mother told me to call the office and tell them that I cannot come because of these clashes. My father suggested that I use the canal road instead of the high way that connects our neighborhood to central Adhamiya. Finally, I found my way out but the situation is still dreadful.

People of our neighborhood were all talking about how they spent the night under the sounds of explosions and shootings. Some of our neighbors did not even send their children to school. A neighbor of mine told me that his relatives called from Adhamiya this morning telling him that the neighborhood is cordoned off.

Since I arrived to the office at 8 a.m., I tried to reach a friend of mine who lives right in the middle of Omar Bin Abdul Aziz Street where the fighting erupted. I couldn’t reach him as cell phone network was down. Finally at 2 p.m., I reached him on the landline which was not working at the beginning of the day.

“It was a horrible night!” my friend said. “Even during the war, we did not go through such a thing,” he added with his voice tired as neither he nor his wife and mother slept the whole night. He and his family were moving from one room to the other as they started hearing the sounds of explosions. “A mortar fell over the house of our neighbor but thankfully, it did not hurt any of the family members. We feared that mortars will also fall on our house.”

Adhamiya is a neighborhood where most of its residents are Sunnis. After the Samarra incident where the Askariya Shiite Shrine was attacked and the aftermath chaotic situation of attacking both Shiite and Sunni mosques, residents of Adhamiya took up arms to protect their neighborhood. No interior ministry forces are allowed to break into the district. It was only the Iraqi army that is allowed to go in. People fear that the death squads which they allegedly say belong to the interior ministry enter, kidnap, and kill the Sunni residents like what happened in other Sunni districts in western Baghdad.

Insurgents and residents had made a deal with the army: if they don’t raid randomly, they are free to protect the area. And that’s what happened, my friend told me.

“The residents fought against the armed men first. The Iraqi army heard the shootings, so they came from the nearby base and fought against the armed men. By that time, the residents entered their houses while US forces came to back up the Iraqi army who called them for support,” my friend said.

People of the area where scared enough not to go out and see what is going on in the streets. “Some of my friends saw a few bodies in Siham Mitwalli and Omar Bin Abdul Aziz Streets. People say these bodies belong to the armed men,” he added.

The Associated Press reported that at least one civilian was killed and seven wounded in the gun battle, Numan hospital officials said.

The last few weeks witnessed an escalation in the insurgent operations in Baghdad by the time politicians continue fighting on positions. They failed today to hold the session of the parliament which was supposed to be held this morning. Dozens of Iraqis are being killed everyday by car bombs and roadside bombs while authorities find at least five dead bodies of innocent people per day.

My heart sank this week when I read Baghdad newspaper reporting that Baghdad is the third worst place in the world for quality of living.

According to a survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting, Baghdad ranks as the world’s third worst city for quality of living, Baghdad paper reported.

This morning, an article on the Sunday Times made me almost die of laughing. I am even laughing now while I am typing these lines. The article says “The American military is planning a ‘second liberation of Baghdad’ to be carried out with the Iraqi army when a new government is installed.

Seriously, isn’t it funny? Enjoy it and let Iraqis enjoy the successive “liberations” until Iraq becomes totally “liberated”. I wonder whose Statue they are going to collapse now! Maybe Hakim's new ones that replaced Saddam's.

Salute...

Shortly after I left to work, four armed men in Iraqi police uniform broke into the house of S. my neighbor. Two cars, a BMW and a Chevrolet, parked right in front of S’s house where two of the four armed men ran into the house by shooting at the locks to find their way in.

Shocked, A. my other 35 year-old neighbor went out of his house to see what that sound of shooting was. “Go in or you’ll be killed,” an armed man in a police uniform barked with his pistol directed at him. A. had no other choice but to go in fearing his sons and daughters may be orphans like many other Iraqis.

For five minutes, A. couldn’t stay silent doing nothing. He grabbed his cell phone from where it was left in his room. With fingers shaking, he pressed “130”, a number the interior ministry allocated for the citizens to inform about any kidnapping or terrorist operations people may notice. “We will do our best by telling all the checkpoints around the neighborhood,” the Colonel told A. by telephone.

Shortly after he called, he heard the sound of the two vehicles leaving the street while S’s wife started calling for help.

S. is one of the wealthy Sunni people who live in our neighborhood. Living in a fancy house, neighbors believed first that these were not insurgents but criminals to ask for ransom. Eventually, they appeared to be terrorists as they were disguising in police uniform.

On the way to Taji, a town north of Baghdad where many insurgents gather and have permanent hideouts, an Iraqi Army checkpoint stopped the two suspected cars. “Open the trunk and get out of the car,” an Iraqi army soldier told a man in a police uniform. “I am a policeman,” said the man. “Whatever. Open it and get out of the car,” the soldier insisted.

After the kidnappers were being searched, the car was left empty. With no signs on the whereabouts of the hostage, the soldiers almost lost hope, until they heard the desperate knocks coming from inside the car. The hostage was helplessly struggling in the trunk, using all his limbs to make a noise that should eventually be the savior. His struggle was heard. A soldier approached the trunk and found the hostage in. The armed men’s faces turned pale.

“Arrest them,” said one of the soldiers to his colleagues. With joyful faces and big smiles after what they achieved, the soldiers accompanied S, who could not believe that he was rescued, to the army base where he called his wife, a relative, and a close neighbor.

Our neighbor who met with the S. at the base expressed how happy he was by the performance of the Iraqi army in this critical period where dozens are being kidnapped and thrown dead on the sidewalks. He narrated all what happened to us according to what S. has told him.

Yesterday, most of the neighborhood people’s talk was not only about how S. was kidnapped; they talked about how happy they were to hear what the Iraqi army did.

Although I should worry that a new kidnapping wave has reached the neighborhood, I feel that there is still some hope. Iraqi soldiers proved that they are working well. By the cooperation of the people, we will defeat all the enemies that turned our country into rubble. I am proud of A, my neighbor who proved that there is nothing impossible and that there is always a way to defeat the enemy.

A salute to the Iraqi soldiers and all the people who help them stop the crime and terrorism…

Sorrow of the Past in Today's Exhibition

Her tears were falling like rain on her cheeks, her voice was shaking the moment she recalled her days in Baghdad, and her Iraqi look was as sad as the look of every eyes of any Iraqi inside and outside the country. Her sadness was so apparent that brought tears to my eyes. She was so sincere in every single word she said.

“When I close my eyes, I can see Baghdad’s streets,” Nahida al-Rammah, one of Iraq’s famous actresses, wept in a documentary interview for one of the post-war organizations, The Iraq Memory Foundation. Narrating how she was chased and tortured by the former regime’s dictatorship, she made me nailed to the feet in front of her heart-breaking image exposed on a wide hp computer monitor. With the sound of the lute playing through the computer speakers, I felt her tears were dancing sadly with the rhythm.

In the fortified blast-walled Green Zone, the foundation held its largest cultural and artistic exhibition on the third anniversary of the fall of Saddam’s dictator regime. As Rammah continued narrating her miserable life under the former dictatorship, 24 Steps to Liberty and I were gazing sadly. Our eyes were filled with tears strong enough not to fall down. Suddenly, 24 left the room. I followed leaving our American colleague, whom we accompanied, watching the interview. What we were watching was enough to remind us with how tough old days were. I couldn’t continue following him. He needed to be alone. He needed to smoke and compensate himself by himself.

Founded in 2003, the Iraq Memory Foundation expands on work begun by scholar and author, Kanaan Makkiya, in 1992 to preserve and analyze Iraqi ex-regime’s crimes. Makiyya’s foundation chose this day, Saddam’s fall anniversary, to expose its work through this gallery.

As 24, American friend, and I were walking in one of the halls, the paintings of some of the most famous artists were shining. They were talking as if their colors were penetrating the silence of the world.

“If you get the chance to buy one painting, which one would you choose,” our American colleague asked. I pointed out to the one with the brown house with wooden Shanasheel [balcony]. This painting reminded me with my Baghdad that I miss a lot. It showed how simple and beautiful it looked like with the Iraqi woman and her tunga. It reminded me with how beautiful life was back in the 1950s and 60s. How he, his friends and family lived peacefully. Another painting drew my attention, an image of doves in front of wolves trying to eat them.

The paintings, the sculptures, and the other documentary things were not the only things that brought tears to our eyes. The fact that these things had to be exposed in a gallery inside the Green Zone was an enough sign to remind us with the present time. Time when the elected politicians fight for positions while the people are being killed by hundreds of thousands. Such a huge cultural exhibition was opened to be seen by Iraqi and American officials only. No citizen fond of art was invited. My heart sank when I thought of my friends and relatives who were unable to see such a nice work. They were waiting for it. It came but there is no way they go and see it.

Flipping through the foundation’s booklet we were given made me more sad when I realized that people will not be able to enjoy their new projects as they will be established inside the Green Zone. The foundation was granted the right to use the Ceremonial Parade Grounds, where the two huge crossing swords lie, as a land for establishing a museum, memorial and a center of culture and scholarship.

Everybody knows that the security situation is going from bad to worse day after day, but this never prevented cultural activities from taking place outside the government’s and the American’s heaven, the Green Zone. Iraq’s first Children’s Culture Theater Festival has started in the Red Zone where the millions, not few thousands, live. It has not been attacked since it started. So why doesn’t this exhibition shed the light on a dark age among people, not away from them?!

For Dr. Makiyya and all the team working hard in Washington D.C. and Baghdad’s Green Zone, I say thank you for all the hard work you did and still doing but all Iraqis will be more happy to see your foundation become among them as it came from them and from all the suffering they went through.

Baghdad Became Completely Lawless

Since the US-led invasion to Iraq, Iraqis have a new irresistible companion. This companion is not an audio CD of a famous star or a brand new cell phone with MP3 ring tones on it. The new companion is their gun.

The word “gun” became the like everyday-words human beings use. Like “water” and “food”, Iraqis unwillingly had to include this word into their everyday conversation and vocabulary.

The New York Times had an interesting article about how Iraqis are using their guns and how “guns have become so embedded in Iraqi life that they are now as ubiquitous as palm trees.”

Many Iraqis became interested in buying weapons more than other things. People are saying the prices of weapons are incredibly increasing due to the increasing demand by the people and criminals as well.

People are fed up. Literally! All my friends are thinking of leaving the country. They live in fear every single moment. I have four Sunni friends whose names are Sunni names. I am so worried about them. Death squads are wandering freely in the country kidnapping and killing people one after the other, sometimes just for their names. Few days ago fourteen bodies were found in western Baghdad. All of the victims’ names were “Omar”, a Sunni name.

The sight of wooden coffins tied on taxis becomes an everyday episode. Bad news become like cookies we have with tea: a boy shot in the face during a carjacking, a ruffian stabbed in a neighborhood fight, a sheik ambushed by his rivals or insurgents, a son with a bullet through the heart, a woman weeping and sobbing for the loss of her son, a married couple shot “mistakenly” by US soldiers.

Few days ago, a friend of mine was caught in the middle of cross fire in Yarmouk neighborhood. He had to hide in one of the shops whose owner hesitated to accept for a minute until my friend begged him. He swore he saw armed men walking freely in front of one of the mosques. They were fighting the Iraqi army until the sheikh of the mosque called on the armed men to stop fighting. “We told you to fight the Interior ministry commandoes, not the National Guards [Iraqi Army]. These are our friends, not enemies,” my friend heard the Sheikh of the mosque calling through the mosque’s loudspeaker. Can you just imagine that? What kind of state is this? If the Iraqi army, which the US military said is improving, was not able to control one neighborhood, what should I expect? Should I dream of a state of law, a state where I feel safe?

“Lawless” is the best word to describe Baghdad for the meantime. Do whatever you like. No one will ask you what you are doing. You can kill whenever and wherever you want. You can stop your car in the middle of the street, pull your gun and shoot anyone you hate. Do you think police will come for rescue? Huh! Of course, not because they might be the ones who are shooting.

Despite the pain, children still have a chance

The situation in Iraq has never calmed down. Gangs in official police uniforms kill and kidnap at commercial shops, bodies show up on streets as militia death squads wander freely, university professors, and scientists are assassinated one after the other, and people continue to suffer from lack of everything, even fresh air. Nothing was spared in this country. This time, it reached young actors.

Few days before they decided to perform their play in the first festival of the Iraqi Children Theater, Fuad Radhi and Haidar Jawad were murdered in cold blood. Radhi and Jawad were actors of children plays. Joined the “Happy Family” acting team two years ago, they both dreamt of a brighter future for Iraqi children through the plays they were intending to perform on theater.

Yesterday, the festival started in Baghdad with the absence of Radhi and Jawad. Their murder did not prevent the organizers from opening the festival. They considered the murder a motive to go on and challenge terrorism that may never stop in a collapsed country.

Last Thursday the actors were murdered when they left the theater after a long day of hard work on their “The Clown and I” play which they were supposed to perform on Saturday.

Iraq’s culture minister, Nouri al-Rawi, gave a speech at the opening of the11-day festival. “It delights us to see Iraqi artists and authors continue concentrating on the children culture and work hard despite the difficulties and problems,” the minister said before an audience of 200 people.

The organizers of the festival say the aim of this carnival is to change the violent atmosphere Iraqi children going through. “We look forward to rescue the children from the disastrous atmosphere,” Awatif Naeem, one of the most famous Iraqi actresses and directors said to Asharq Al-Awsat, a Saudi London-based newspaper.

The plays that are performed by senior and young Iraqi artists concentrate on how struggle between good and evil looks like. Fatin al-Jarrah, director of Children Culture Center and the director of one of the participating plays “The birds return to their nests” said the play concentrates on this theme, the struggle between the good and evil. “The play portrays a snake attacking a nest of birds forcing them to leave it.,” Jarrah said. “By the cooperation of other birds, the snake was defeated.”