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December 25, 2001
Jennifer Loewenstein
Israel's
Human Rights Record
December 24, 2001
Sam Bahour
It
Happened One Morning
Yair Khilou
Why I Resisted
Being Drafted into the Israeli Army
Michael
Chisari
War
as Diversionary Tactic
Cockburn/St. Clair
Enron
and the Green Seal
December 21, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
War
Good for Bush
John Chuckman
The
First Victim in the
War on Terror
December 20, 2001
Lawrence
McGuire
Killing
Other People's Children
Miriam Rozen
Foundation
Without Representation?
Kenneth
Roth
A
Letter to Rumsfeld on
Military Tribunals
William Blum
Casualties:
Theirs and Ours
December 19, 2001
Marjorie
Cohn
Don't
Pre-Judge John Walker
Sam Bahour
Palestine
and You
December 18, 2001
Shahid
Alam
Clash
of Civilizations?
Carl Estabrook
Who
Opposes This War?
December 17, 2001
Edward
Said
Mahfouz
and the Cruelty
of Memory
December 16, 2001
Amira Howeidy
Dangerous By
Definition?
Bahour
and Dahan
Zinni's
Doomed Mission
December 15, 2001
John Isaacs
Bush's 12
Lumps of Coal
for Christmas
Dana Cook
The
Execution of bin Laden
Yusuf Agha
Tale of the
Tape:
Osama Gump?
December 14, 2001
Don Atapattu
A Conversation with
Norman
Finkelstein
December 13, 2001
Trojanow and Hoskote:
Nonsense
Mantras of Our Times
Dr. A.
Tajudeen
Afghanistan
and Zaire
Michael Williams
Prohibit
Prohibition
December 12, 2001
Jack McCarthy
Hitchens,
Walker
and Osama's Tape
Laura W. Murphy
Ashcroft's
Jihad
Shahid
Alam
Race
and Visibility
December 11, 2001
Joshua Orton
University
of Wisconsin
Won't Aid FBI Interviews
Philip
Farruggio
Cleansing
the Nation's Soul
Robert Fisk
Why I Was
Beaten
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
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CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
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CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
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December 26,
2001
No Holiday for Iraq
The People of the
Valley
By Ramzi Kysia
When I first visited Iraq in the summer of 1999,
I wrote that nothing could have prepared me for my trip - for
the incredible hospitality of the people, or for the incredible
brutality of the sanctions. Since then, I've seen reports that
sanctions against Iraq were crumbling, and I had hoped that the
lives of the Iraqi people were much improved.
I was wrong.
Chronic unemployment, underemployment,
and hyperinflation are still the rule, and most Iraqis are still
struggling in terrible poverty. 11 years after the Gulf War,
the electricity has not yet been fully restored, and much of
the country's infrastructure remains in disrepair. The hospitals
here are just as crowded, and almost as poorly stocked, as I
remember from 1999. The doctors complain just as much about not
having enough medicines, or the proper medicines. And the children
are still dying by the thousands every month.
Walking the streets of Baghdad you do notice more shops today,
with more goods in them, but then you also notice the young children,
in torn and dirty clothes, searching through the garbage by the
side of the road - looking for treasure, or maybe just for a
meal. Street children are a new phenomenon in Iraq, a country
where, before the war, childhood obesity used to be the biggest
problem pediatricians complained about.
Walking the streets of Baghdad you notice the architecture -
the boarded-up and shuttered buildings, the crumbling sidewalks,
and other evidences of 11 years of economic ruin. But you also
notice the new, box-like structures being built, with huge archways,
intricate brickwork, and jutting columns, balconies, and facades.
There's a striking mix of old and new, of socialist sensibility
and Babylonian splendor - Frank Lloyd Wright meets Lawrence of
Arabia. These buildings are beautiful, and you have to wonder
how many of them will be standing in six months if the U.S. does
decide to massively bomb this country.
People here don't seem too worried about the U.S. expanding the
"war" to Iraq. Everyone agrees that after Afghanistan,
America will bomb here next, but - as one man put it to me -
the Iraqi people are "used to the voice of American bombs."
Iraqis are celebrating Ramadan, and going about their lives
as usual. They say that the future is out of their hands, so
why bother worrying about it? They point out that the U.S. has
bombed Iraq repeatedly for 11 years - almost every day in the
North and South - and that they're still here.
I don't know. This time seems different - much more serious,
much more frightening.
On Sadoun Street, in one of Iraq's main shopping districts, Mr.
Moyab has a supermarket brimming with Western goods - but priced
far out of reach for most Iraqis. He insists that things haven't
changed for people here, "There's not more money - only
Baghdad, only Sadoun, only Karrada, only here. We must finish
this blockade."
At the Inaa art gallery, proprietor Ala told me that, "people
are people in everyplace in the world. We are people who love
peace, and we don't want war." He wanted me to ask the American
people "why they are bombing Iraq and everywhere in the
world everyday and we don't know why? There is nothing between
the Iraqi people and the American people - only politics."
But the politics has consequences. One out every four Iraqi children
is severely malnourished, and thousands die from malnutrition
and disease every month. Though the UN food ration has steadily
improved over the last five years, it still contains no fresh
fruits or vegetables, and no animal protein - a fact that Dr.
Mahmoud Mehi, the director of al-Mansour Pediatric Hospital in
Baghdad complains bitterly about, "In this hospital - and
this is a teaching hospital, in the capitol - we have a child
die every day and sometimes two. Imagine what it is outside of
the capitol, in the rural areas."
Off the record, UN officials explain that a handout will never
substitute for a normal economy, and that the food ration represents
not only the primary source of food for most Iraqis, but their
primary source of income as well. As a result, many people sell
parts of the ration to raise cash. The UN also complains about
the terrible number of "holds" placed on contracts
by the U.S. At this moment, there are over $4 billion in contracts
on hold at the UN Sanctions Committee, representing 25% of all
the supplies shipped to Iraq over the last 5 years of the program.
Even though Iraq has sold almost $50 billion dollars worth of
oil since the Oil-for-Food program first began in December 1996,
they've only received a little over $16 billion in supplies.
This works out to an average of $140 per person per year, which
- despite its oil wealth - puts Iraq among the poorest nations
in the world.
As the United States moves toward a massive, military intervention
in Iraq, we would do well to look at the devastation that's already
been wrought here, and listen to people like Dr. Mehi who asks
Americans to, "use wisdom, and think in a better way for
other countries."
Back on Sadoun Street, Mr. Najeb runs a new photography studio.
Colorful pictures of modest adults and smiling children line
the walls of the entrance. The studio itself is freshly painted
with starscapes and tropical motifs. Najeb has worked as a freelance
photographer for many years, but only recently was able to afford
his own shop. As such he represents the first, stumbling attempts
to return Iraq to something approaching a normal economy. After
welcoming me and offering tea, Najeb wanted to tell me that the
Iraqi people understand the difference between the American government
and the American people. He said to tell Americans that, "we're
all human beings - we're all the same." Expressing concern
over the increasing likelihood of war, Najeb related an Iraqi
saying that, "The people in the top of the mountain look
to the people in the valley, and they look small. But the people
in the valley look to the people in the mountain as well, and
they look very small to them too."
Indeed. At this critical moment in history, Americans would do
well to heed the example of forgiveness being offered by these
people of the valley and ask ourselves: how small do we really
feel?
Ramzi Kysia is a Muslim-American peace activist, and serves
on the board of directors for the Education
for Peace in Iraq Center. He is currently in Iraq as part
of a Voices in the
Wilderness peace delegation trying to stop the war.
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