Nearly three out of four Americans think Iraqis are better off now than before the invasion, a survey shows.
Iraqi blogger Riverbend might beg to differ. She describes how Baghdad’s middle class is being expelled by Mahdist goons:
Residents of Baghdad are systematically being pushed out of the city. Some families are waking up to find a Klashnikov bullet and a letter in an envelope with the words “Leave your area or else.” The culprits behind these attacks and threats are Sadr’s followers- Mahdi Army. It’s general knowledge, although no one dares say it out loud. In the last month we’ve had two different families staying with us in our house, after having to leave their neighborhoods due to death threats and attacks. It’s not just Sunnis- it’s Shia, Arabs, Kurds- most of the middle-class areas are being targeted by militias.
Other areas are being overrun by armed Islamists. The Americans have absolutely no control in these areas. Or maybe they simply don’t want to control the areas because when there’s a clash between Sadr’s militia and another militia in a residential neighborhood, they surround the area and watch things happen.
This takes the surprise out of the fact that, in a survey carried out this April by the International Republican Institute, only 1% of Iraqis said they trusted American and coalition forces for their personal protection (and that poll was taken before a certain ‘incident’ was known).
Mahdist militiamen in Baghdad
Nor is it rocket science to see why, as even the Wall Street Journal admits, “the middle class — upon whom so much depends — is fleeing Iraq in numbers.” A point worth noting for the 55 percent of Americans who, according the the aforementioned poll, think “history will give the U.S. credit for bringing freedom and democracy” to Iraq. For without an urban, educated middle class, Iraqi freedom and democracy remain a chimera.
It’s the last remains of this middle class that are going now. Here’s a BBC report from 2002:
But since 1991, life in Iraq has changed dramatically – the country’s GDP has dropped from US$3,000 to $715 and doctors have had to learn anew how to treat diseases that had disappeared from Iraq in the 1980s such as cholera and diphtheria.
For the past 12 years, the country has been struggling under UN-imposed sanctions, which have greatly affected the life of the Iraqis but done little to undermine the power of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Riverbend continues:
For me, June marked the first month I don’t dare leave the house without a hijab, or headscarf.
As documented in this HRW background paper, Iraq ranked among the most progressive Arab societies with respect to women’s rights from the 1968 Baathist coup until the Gulf War. Gender equality was enshrined in the constitution; there were compulsory schooling and free higher education for both genders; and the law ensured equal employment opportunities in the public sector. However, the tide turned after 1991, as a weakened dictator traded off his modernizing vision for religious support, especially among reactionary Shias. Additionally, UN sanctions hit women disproportionately, just as they decimated the middle class.
After the second US-led war on Iraq, the wheel has now turned full cycle.
Not depressing enough, you say? Try this fresh report in the Observer:
Hardline Islamic insurgent groups in Iraq are targeting a new type of victim with the full protection of Iraqi law, The Observer can reveal. The country is seeing a sudden escalation of brutal attacks on what are being called the ‘immorals’ – homosexual men and children as young as 11 who have been forced into same-sex prostitution.
There is growing evidence that Shia militias have been killing men suspected of being gay and children who have been sold to criminal gangs to be sexually abused.
What’s not to like? Reading on:
Homosexuality is seen as so immoral that it qualifies as an ‘honour killing’ to murder someone who is gay – and the perpetrator can escape punishment. Section 111 of Iraq’s penal code lays out protections for murder when people are acting against Islam.
‘The government will do nothing to tackle this issue. It’s really desperate when people get to the stage they’re trading their children for money. They have no alternatives because there are no jobs,’ Hili says.
I think this goes to show that three out of four Americans can be wrong.
From my blog.
Twenty thousand Baghdad citizens became internally displaced during the last ten days of July alone, the BBC just reported.
The poll results signify the utter failure of the US media to report facts about Iraq, and the success of the Bush propaganda machinery to muddy the waters on what has really been happening. Truly depressing.
The Mahdists will have an easy task in decimating the Baghdad middle class – there hardly was one at the outset of this war. Before the first Gulf war, the Iraqi Dinar each bought you 3 US$. Years of sanctions and the consequent collapse of the Iraqi economy brought the black market rate of the dinar to about 1,800 for a dollar (while the official rate remained 1:3) just as the Oil-For-Food Programme kicked in in the spring of 1997 – IOW a distortion by a factor of 5,400.
We had retired colonels and university professors as drivers – no way they could survive on a pension of a few hundred dinars per month. Anyone on a fixed government income (i.e., the middle class) were in the same situation. To survive, people resorted to selling off their possessions (antiques, rugs, furniture) – all scooped up for a low price by Saddam and his cronies.
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has pushed the Shia Iranian frontier to the Anbar province of central Irag and Baghdad (Sadr city).
U.S. allies Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan and Israel got a different outcome than expected. But, that’s all in the uncertainty of the Pentagon war games and premeditated, ehh… I mean pre-emptive war on terror.
Just this morning I heard an excellent BBC interview with an CSIS expert on the Middle East. [No transcript available yet – Oui] His conclusion: someone please explain to George Bush the difference between Sunni and Shia muslims and between a terrorist and a freedom fighter. The Sunni, Wahabi and Salafi groups were responsible for 911 and gave birth to Osama Bin Laden, Al Zawahiri and Al Qaeda.
Ra'anan Gissin
But of course the Israel government prefer to confuse the issue and succeeded in convincing the Israeli populace, by attacking Hezbollah they are fighting Iran.
American and Iragi lives have paved the road from Tehran to Baghdad, by way of Basra.
● Propaganda Hasbara Made in Israel
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
They’re better off… dead. Is what I hear most of the time.
To many, it seems that people and lives don’t matter unless it’s their own or some hollywood starlet.
Many don’t even realize what life was like in Iraq (many can’t even pronounce it correctly) let alone what it is like now. So how the hell can they compare?
Because of… exceptionalism.
Most thing this country is better off since Bush… and we all know it isn’t.
Great Diary Sirroco! Thank you.
I want to applaud you for your diaries here and how good they are written. Thank you for all the information and thank you for just being here. Keep up the great work..hugs
Now as you have to know, I worry so much about Riverbend. She has been on my mind and heart now for several months. I truly do not know now much longer she and her family can reside there. I think that someday and sooner rather than later she will notify us that they are leaving, as well. I seriously worry about her and their safety.
Of course this administration has not one simple clue as to what to do even from the get go. This leads me to think that t. franks and his group are idiots. I find it rather hard to believe the crew there now, too.
IN the man time, our ppl are getting bombed to death or hurt so badly it is hard to see how much humanity is left in this. As the old saying goes, Revenge is a MF’er. I see that the FNG’s are the ones who are dying or the ones returning are dying. I just wonder……just my pov only.
Thank you Brenda. I am humbled by your praise! Sadly I can’t promise to hang around for long; I’ll probably quit blogging for good in the near future, so every diary may be my last.
I have also been increasingly concerned about Riverbend, though of course she’s just one individual Iraqi and I’ve never interacted with her. Like you, I fear that she too will retire from blogging soon, but involuntarily. One can only hope that the family have the means for getting out of the country in time. I surmise they probably do.
Meanwhile, here’s the Chimperor’s latest pronouncement on the situation:
Grotesque. By any scholarly definition there has been civil war since 2004, and not a minor one either.