The First Square

Few days after the end of the war in 2003, with the spread of looting and kidnapping under the auspice of the US forces who were watching with a smile the feverish campaign of destruction and burning which maintained all the Iraqi official institutions except the ministry of Oil, and with the absence of police and army, people found themselves obliged to protect themselves by themselves.

In every street in any neighborhood in Baghdad, trunks of trees, big barrels filled with dust and other kinds of metal barriers were put to block the streets, civil committees formed with the help of the Imams and tribal leaders to guard neighborhoods during the day and night with private guns to spare their families the danger of the killing and kidnapping gangs.

Large number of Iraqi women started to put scarves in fear of Islamic movements and many cases of killing and kidnapping took place against women who were not wearing hijab, in a way even Christian women began to wear hijab either because of threats they received or because some of them killed for this reason.

Now, after three years, and with all this pompous talk we hear by the Iraqi government and US administration about the increasing number of the Iraqi security forces and army and their mounting ability in controlling the Iraqi provinces, I found myself doing the same stories I did in 2003, in a way I know all the details but the amount of fear is much more than before among people and the extent of crimes have exceeded all limits.

Is this a coincident or it is something planned that we have been moving in the same square all that time, and moreover we are running back to the first step.

I say that because now, if you tour Baghdad’s neighborhoods, you will find 90% of them are blocked by trees trunks, barrels and big stones and men are guarding them with their private guns and they are always in a state of alert to confront death squads in case they storm their neighborhoods, snatch some people and then their bodies would be found in the trash.

I say that now because I found myself doing the same story about women who are threatened and killed just because they do not wear hijab or they drive cars. Only yesterday, a legal inspector told me that four women found dead in Hay Al-Jihad with shaved hair because they were driving cars and not putting hijab.

Eight kids between 12-15 year shot on their heads in Ameriyia and Hay Al-jihad in Baghdad because they were wearing short pants, by two ”Opel” cars carrying few men hiding their faces with Kufiyia.

By chance a patrol for keeping order forces were passing by and saw the massacre and chased the cars, one of the “Opel” car was captured and for the surprise of the forces, when they took off their kufyias, they found that they were all between 14-16 year.

All the pharmacies in these two districts in addition to Al-Yermouk, Jamia’ and Mansour are warned of selling any Iranian products, or they will be killed and their pharmacies will be blown up.

All the people in these neighborhood are informed that any person uses Iranian cooling device called “ Sacht” or sell it, will be killed immediately, these devices are used by the Iraqis because they operate on local generators used in most of the Iraqi neighborhoods now as a result of luck of national power and because of the unbearable heat in Baghdad nowadays.

My friend added that these neighborhoods are declared as Emirate for the resistance there and to be exclusive for Sunnis, ethnic cleansing is very active there to kick out Shiite of these places.

If the kid who wears the short pant is lucky, he will be punished with cables and warned of doing such thing again, one of these kids said that the gunmen told him when they captured him “ Hey you, you are A’ni “ From A’na city in Ramadi” how do you claim you are a real man while you are wearing such shameful pants?!!”

The inspector told me that he thinks that all these crimes are committed under the auspice of the US forces who were patrolling these districts but these gunmen did not attack them, yet, they attacked the innocent kids and women.