Not long after the statue of Saddam fell in Firdos Square, several CODEPINK women and I returned to Iraq. We'd first visited in February during the time Bush proclaimed, "The game is over" and announced his plans for "shock and awe." We'd learned then how much Iraqis loved Americans and did not want our disrupting their country; they asked us to let them deal with Saddam because the change had to come from within or it could be a disaster. We fell in love with Iraq and felt totally safe there, taking cabs in the wee hours of the morning, walking at 2 a.m. on the Tigress and driving to many parts of the country.
Returning a few months later, however, we found the country devastated. Bustling markets were empty, the streets were those of a ghost town. Electricity was rare if at all and gas lines were miles long. U.S. soldiers in Humvees sped down the streets with an embarrassing arrogance. Jerry Bremer had just arrived and had issued 100 edicts that infuriated every Iraqi. The story on the street was that it only took Saddam a month to get the country back in shape after the Gulf War; thus, impatience and anger toward the U.S. were growing. Over and over, we heard from Iraqis, "We had one Saddam and now we have hundreds."
We were in Iraq to see how to support women in the transition, going to meeting after meeting discussing how they were going to be included. Zainab Salbi from the non-profit peace group Women for Women International (W4WI) was in many of those meetings with us, including a reception that Bremer threw inside the Coalition Provisional Authority, now the Green Zone. Her father was Saddam's pilot and her mother had sent her to the U.S. to marry out of concern for her safety. I talked to Zainab a few days ago to learn about her most recent trip to Iraq.
"In six years they have destroyed Iraq," she said, her eyes tearing as she began to tell me what she found. She used the image of a pen trying to balance on the tip of her finger to describe Iraq now: balancing but very unstable. Since she was there last it is a bit safer. Women who had been in exile and hiding for four years were starting to reemerge. But more than 70 percent of the women are not sending their daughters to school. I asked her about the women from the Bremer reception; 20 women have been killed and most others are gone.
When I asked about Baghdad, she asked which one. "There are two distinct Baghdads, the red one and the green one," she said. "And they do not relate. On the red side, they call the Americans the 'friendly other side.'"
The Embassy/Green Zone is another city within a city, now one-fourth of Baghdad, she explained. It was built for 5,000 employees and already people are having to double up -- it has burst past 5,000. Most of those who live there are not Iraqi but Ugandan, Peruvian, Burmese, etc. They cannot leave the Green Zone, so they have no idea about what is outside the walls. She overheard a conversation about a car bomb while she was inside and learned three soldiers were killed. She wondered why the United States sends people to Iraq to get double pay and benefits when they are not even going outside the walls.
U.S. soldiers were still a part of Baghdad while she was there. People are still living without electricity but it has gotten a bit better, something like two hours on and three hours off, she said, a change that has helped to engender the window of calm she experienced. It was still spring and she felt like the flowers of Iraq were beginning to bloom again. There was more hope because there was less violence, but the country still is very fragile.
There is nothing made in Iraq for sale. Not even those fantastic cucumbers we loved so much on our drives through the country. Bremer had created a five-percent flat tax for imports in one of his edicts, so Iraqi can't produce anything. It will always cheaper to bring in products from the from outside. No other country would ever allow such a thing. The Bremer policies were made to destroy Iraq from the inside out.
I asked Zainab about her grandfather's house, a beautiful home on the Tigres River where she had held her first classes for W4WI there six years ago. She has since closed W4WI because it became too dangerous -- first a torture den, then a brothel. This turned the conversation to trafficking, which she said is horrendous. Most of the girls in prison are between the ages of 12 to 18. They were kidnapped, taken to Syria or surrounds, trafficked and when they get sick or too old brought home to the authorities because they didn't have the right papers and put in jail. Midwives also told her of a huge increase in abortions from the prostitution.
Just six years ago, only the old and very religious were covered, women were employed everywhere and Baghdad University was bustling with young women. Now it is bleak. Zainab was able to go uncovered but it is still mandatory for the Iraqi women. Most businesses she visited had no women working, not to say they did not try, but they're just fired within days. Some older women were able to keep their jobs but young women have no way in. She said the university was very sad with so many fewer women. Women, young women, have been sent back to the dark ages.
She too can't find the way to affect the gridlock of people believing it is over. The U.S. has not taken responsibility to restore the country it destroyed. Iraqis need us to hold those responsible who have done this to them and to leave them to rebuild from the shambles. She left our conversation with this: "It basically looks like we do own it and have created our own kind of hell out of it."
Jodie Evans is the co-founder of CODEPINK Women for Peace and has been an environmental, peace and justice activist for more than 30 years.
Good luck with that. Remember Vietnam? Laos? Cambodia? All destroyed, millions killed and injured, and all for a conflict waged mainly for domestic political reasons. Conservative Democrats and Republicans wanted to appear tough to their constituents and were willing to kill countless innocents in the process. (Tape recordings of LBJ, Richard Nixon and others bear this out.) Now that process is being repeated in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, where extremists are actually flourishing because of the U.S. presence there. (As with the Southeast Asia debacle, some purportedly liberal U.S. groups actually support our latest romp in imperialistic carnage, all the better to display their toughness and patriotism.)
U.S. policy never changes much because the people running our government never change much. They come from pretty much the same background and are carefully vetted by the same establishment political parties and other special interests. All this adds up to a behavioral arc that is likely to end in tragedy for the U.S. when one extremist group or another gets its hands on WMD. And when that happens, will anyone be surprised? Maybe, emerging from our own rubble, we can build a government that conducts itself more intelligently and responsibly . . . but I doubt it.
I know that you are telling the Exact and Shining True. It is impossible to hide The Sun.
Thanks for your courage in going to Iraq. .... Thanks for your courage and bravery in telling the Truth and not a lot of garbage like what we are used to by those people that speak of a "Democratic Country" and a "Bush Win" or "Cheney Triumph"....
I can understand the Wickedness and the Evil of those that profit from the Wars and become Richer and Richer with their contracts and sales to the Military .... But I find it hard to understand the Imbecility of those that still make a lot of Propaganda for more War and Violence.
I keep a Blog with a Diary of everything that happens and the Videos of People that tell the Real Story of Children Starving and scavenging for food in competition with the rats..... in Afghanistan .... and of Women being more and more oppressed. Here it is PROPHESIZING.COM :
I always prophesized Disaster and Failure :
http://prophesizing.blogspot.com
Vicente Duque
Your present and future tax dollars at work.
http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/6037
This is just the first step in a long process of returning Iraq to the Iraqis.