I Am Pregnant And I Exist

In an already bifurcated country, The November issue of Femmes du Maroc – Women of Morocco, a Moroccan magazine that caters to the interests of Moroccan women with a panoply of feminine subjects is bound to turn into lascivious fodder for a misguided and testosterone charged fringe of society, an opportunity for vitriolic religious condemnations and exhortations to aspiring jihadists to perverted religious zealots, and a cause for celebration to post-feminists and advocates of women’s rights. The magazine dedicated its cover to a very pregnant former 2M anchorwoman Nadia Larguet, in the buff, with one hand covering her breast and the other one holding her belly a la Demi Moore on the cover of the August 1991 Vanity Fair. A first in an Arab and a Moslem country. It will certainly spur a vocal public backlash against Mrs. Larguet and Femmes du Maroc. National and international news outlets will cover the story ad nauseam.

The issue transcends the aesthetic aspects of pregnancy and nudity. The exclusionary and sometimes castigating treatment pregnant women are subjected to is a leading cause of abortion in Morocco where the number of out of wedlock pregnancies have dramatically risen. The pool of medical doctors performing abortions today has grown exponentially. They charge 3000 Dirhams ($391.00). Additionally, an increased number of women, especially in rural areas where medical oversight is minimal and sometimes non-existent, die from standard pregnancy complications.

The message of the magazine’s cover is a loud and clear confirmation of the self: I am pregnant; I am beautiful, and I exist. I agree. In our society, pregnant women need to feel less excluded and be viewed in a more gratifying fashion. For a country like Morocco, where television channels are flipped at the mere sight of a man an a woman kissing, where, in neighborhood foodstuff stores, menstrual pads are stuffed in a black plastic bag to conceal them from the embarassed looks of customers, the idea is outrageous. I find it revolutionary and prescient. I am hoping the cover will set off a debate on what some might see as mere sexual objectification of women and others as feminine empowerment. I see in it an expression of the beauty of fertility and a much needed glamorization of woman as a genitor of life in a male dominated society that regards pregnant women – especially those in their third quarter – as nothing more than diaphanously dressed humanoid incubators, breast feeders, care providers. Generally speaking, men in the Arab culture are outside the emotional support system of their pregnant wives. The task is often delegated to female family members. Husbands who accompany their pregnant wives to OBGY consultations are a rarity. Seldom do men assist their delivering wives or witness the birth of their babies; they financially support the endeavor, but remain content in their impervious insularity.

I will ask you to not judge the magazine by its cover. You can choose to see it as nothing more than a nude picture. Such is your prerogative. You can also choose to see the glossy cover as an attention grabber to all the problems women endure on a daily basis. Everyday, in a remote decrepit mud hut in one of our villages, a pregnant woman is dying from complications while her husband, because of that traditional mindset we are so attached to, is detached from that reality. The problem is in the multitudes of abortion clinics in our cities. The problem is the increased teenage pregnancies caused by, not promiscuity, but lack of sexual education. Tradition has not solved these problems. In fact, in some cases, it has exacerbated them. It takes moral fortitude to recognize that aspects of our traditions are part of the problem. It’s outrageous to me that there are some who refuse to see beyond the nudity. Was it necessary to sensationalize the issue with a nude picture? Absolutely! Because the Arab psyche is so traumatized that only shock therapy would work. Countless articles were written about Moroccan women’s problems, but they all failed to dislodge the entrenched retral thinking. If a polemic is what will do, so be it.

We need to purge ourselves of that mentality. 

A. T. B. Copyright © 2009

TAXI

I just posted my latest short story – TAXI. You can read it here.

The Appeal Of “Taken”… Kill A Moslem

 

At the behest of friends, I went to see “Taken” this weekend. The movie ranked second in the top box office list with a total of 20.3 million dollars. To me, that is a good indicator the American audience loved it.  I saw the trailers, but I was not expecting more than a mindless action movie.

I walked into the showroom holding my cup of a double Americano – which as I always do, snuck in. The place was packed. A couple of seats were spared at the two very front rows. I wasn’t gonna watch the movie with the tip of my nose touching the projection screen. Instead, I walked up the side stairs and sat on the red carpeted floor just as the movie started.

The storyline is mundane. A CIA operative with “a very special set of skills”, played by Liam Neeson, devoted his career  to being what he labeled “a preventer,” making sure America’s enemies were eliminated. His service to his country had a steep price; his wife divorced him taking his daughter away from him. Guilt-ridden for neglecting his daughter’s needs while chasing terrorists around the globe protecting the US, he retires and settles in Los Angeles where she now lives with her millionaire step-father and mother.

The daughter, who is seventeen, decides to go on a trip to Europe with a friend. He is reluctant to approve it because his CIA experience taught him anywhere outside the US is dangerous. But he relents. Lo and behold, the daughter and her friend are kidnapped in Paris by a sex trafficking ring. The ex-CIA dotting father then flies to Paris, traces his daughter’s kidnappers in a record time, picking up hot leads faster than a hooker could wash her crack and sell it again. He drops bodies left and right. He even gets to torture one of the kidnappers and shoot the wife of a former intelligence “buddy” to get the information he needs. He kicks ass and takes names and finally saves his daughter and returns with her to LA where he is celebrated as a hero by not just his ex-wife, but her husband too. I was left wondering why the CIA is not sending agents like him to Afghanistan. This guy could have found Ossama Ben Laden in a couple of hours.

As I said earlier, a blood drenched, revenge driven B movie with all the explosions and car chases to keep you on the edge of your seat gawping.

I was gravely mistaken.  

This movie was much more than that. It had a message to the younger generation. That is why, despite the lurid violence, it was rated PG13. I became more sensitive to the underlying message as our hero charges on in Paris behind the scent of his daughter. The first indicator came when he and his buddies from the agency reminisce about an operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah? How is this relevant to the story? Later on in Paris, our hero locates, at Rue Du Paradis (how symbolic), a group of Albanians who allegedly are his daughter’s kidnappers. They all had on their hands tattoos of a crescent and a star, a symbol generally regarded as Islamic nowadays. Our cowboy kills the evil Moslem men faster than Bob Munden draws his weapon; he saves one for torturing CIA style.

Then, he follows his leads until he finds his daughter being auctioned like a slave. The auction was run by a rich French businessman who gets wacked too. This part of the movie would have been more a propos in 2002 and 2003 when congress changed the names of French fries and French toast to freedom fries and freedom toast.

And guess who buys the kidnapped virgins? A fat, pompous, and cowardly Moslem Arab.

The audience cheered our hero on throughout the movie with applause, words of encouragement, and finally a good cheer when he shot the fat, pompous, and cowardly Moslem Arab as he hid behind the whimpering all American teenager.

The 93-minute movie got an 8 out of 10 rating on IMDb Its message is loud and clear: the enemy is Islam and whatever the US does to protect itself, no matter how unlawful it is, is justified.

In 2007, I saw another movie that tackled the theme of sex trade with more intensity and realism. It was “Trade.” It tells the story of a 13-year-old Mexican girl who was kidnapped by a sex trade ring in Mexico City and sold to pedophiles in … the US. “Trade” was based on the New York Times Magazine article “The Girls Next Door” by Peter Landesman who chronicled the operations of sex trafficking rings in American suburbia. The American audience was not as receptive of it as it is of “Taken.”

“Trade” could have been a tremendous success if the sex traders were Moslem and the protagonist killed a dozen Arab looking men to save the 13-year-old victim. Don’t you think?

 

 

A. T. B. Copyright © 2009

 

A Thank You Note To Bush, Cheney, Rice, And Rumsfeld

Dear former President Bush, former VP Cheney, former Secretary of State Rice, and former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, the world should be thankful to you for the following:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Harold Pinter: Curtain Down

After a protracted bout with cancer, the theatre iconoclast and 2005 Nobel Prize for literature winner Harold Pinter died December 24^th, 2008. Pinter was known not just as a playwright, but as an actor, theatre director, and a political activist. Since the 1950’s when he broke into the theatre business as a repertory actor using the stage name David Baron, Pinter wrote twenty-nine stage plays, twenty-six screen plays, and a substantial body of poetry, fiction, and essays. He also directed almost 50 stage, television and film productions. He is buried at Kensal Green Cemetery. Pinter left instructions for his funeral; at his behest, actor and close friend Michael Gambon read from “No Man’s land” which Pinter wrote in 1974.

“And so I say to you, tender the dead as you would yourself be tendered, now, in what you would describe as your life.”

A. T. B. Copyright © 2009

AFRICOM Base In Tan Tan Confirmed

 

(U.S. Marine Corps Photo by Sergeant Justin Park)

AFRICOM has officially assumed all the duties and responsibilities of a full-fledged geographic unified command by taking over from EUCOM and CENTCOM all DoD operations pertaining to 53 African nations except for Egypt which will remain a CENTCOM area of operation. Negotiations, which were kept secret to mitigate regional political sensitivities, namely of Algeria and Libya, between the Moroccan government and AFRICOM  Commanding General, General William E. Ward, to secure a location in Cap Draa in the Tan Tan region have been ongoing.  Cap Draa as a host to AFRICOM has finally been confirmed by reliable US sources. This confirmation was reported this week by a number of international and national media outlets. The base in Cap Draa will be operational in 2011. On 23 February 2008, I stated in one of my earliest articles on AFRICOM:  

The project to establish AFRICOM headquarters in Morocco, namely in the outskirts of Tan Tan, was not cancelled; it became surreptitious. Morocco is still willing to host AFRICOM and the U.S. is serious in its consideration of Morocco, if not as a full-fledged home to the African command, as a regional command to a portion of the African area of operation (AO).

Seabees and Red Horse squadron personnel, highly mobile civil engineering response forces supporting, respectively, the US Navy and Marine Corps and the US Air Force contingency and special operations worldwide, have been deploying to the Tan Tan area to build the infrastructure for the base AFRICOM will be using.

I remain skeptical that AFRICOM will use the base as a headquarters. AFRICOM headquarters will remain in Stuttgart, Germany as I’ve stated in a previous article. Cap Draa will most likely house a minimally manned forward Command and Control (C2) element as well as a logistical base for the pre-positioning of War Reserve Materiel (WRM), i.e. bare base systems, medical, munitions, fuels mobility support equipment, vehicles, rations, aerospace ground equipment, air base operability equipment and associated spares and other consumables. The base will coordinate with and provide support to Marine Air/Ground Task Force (MAGTF) elements, US Navy combat ships, US Army Special Operations units, US Air Force Logistical fleet, and National Guard forces. Marine Expeditionary Units (MEU), US Air Force fighter jets, and Army Operational Detachment Alphas will, thus, be able to use the Moroccan Sahara as year-round training grounds. Their programs will include a training package for the Moroccan military, one of which is the African Lion reiteration.

Morocco’s strategic decision to sponsor a US base in Tan Tan will move any future talks on the disputed Sahara into a more intensive and substantive phase. Algeria and its proxy army, polisario, have clearly lost the initiative. Morocco stands to benefit from the US presence on its territory in a number of other ways. In the article I mentioned earlier, I stated the following:  

The benefits to be accrued by the Moroccan government outweigh the risks. Militarily, Morocco will have added access to U.S. military provision programs allowing it to upgrade its military hardware. Under the auspices of the Foreign Military Training Programs, its military personnel will benefit from the advanced training courses U.S. military schools and academies offer; the U.S. DoD will also provide funding to refurbish Moroccan military bases, ports, and airfields. The Moroccan coast guard will gain the assistance of the U.S. navy in its interdiction operations in the Strait of Gibraltar and along its Atlantic shores. The government’s offensive against Islamic extremist cells will also stand to benefit from U.S. intelligence capabilities and U.S. funds set specifically for anti-terrorism operations in Africa. Other agencies, such as U.S.AID, governed by the U.S. Department of State will be involved, providing a much needed boost to social and economic reforms. Overall, the establishment of AFRICOM in Morocco will stabilize the region and foster an environment friendly to foreign investment and conducive to economic growth.

Other US bases are been established throughout the continent. The strategic intent of the Pentagon’s military planners is for AFRICOM to increase its footprint in the continent and to lay the ground for a rapid and long-term access to troubled areas and specifically oil producing regions.

A. T. B. Copyright © 2008

Mabrouk Agent Tariq Mouhib

A traffic police officer routinely pulled over a vehicle that ran a traffic light. The driver got out of the car, verbally attacked him, drew a handgun out and shot him, then walked up to him and kicked him in the gut before he jumped back into his car to wait for the police. Upon arriving, the police drove the perp away more concerned for his safety and comfort than for the wounded police officer. The shooter was connected to the Moroccan royal family. A shrif. A master. And we thought slavery was abolished.

Agent Mouhib, congratulations! You are now a prime candidate for a “GRIMA,” possibly a hefty bonus, and a promotion. Do not be surprised if you are handed your Permanent Change of Station orders as soon as you’re back on your feet; you are no longer wanted where people know you. High ranking officials,  your commanding officer, Charqi Idraiss included, pursuing to protocol doctrines in our country, are going to pamper you, and if that does not work, threaten you, to coerce you to keep your mouth shut. Didn’t you see how they posted guards by your hospital room to prevent anyone from talking to you; how fast they segued into explanations and proclaimed your assailant, Hassan Al Ya’koubi, the in-law of the king of Morocco and a successful businessman, suffering from a mental illness; “ma diroush fih ‘akalkoum, rah hbeel meskin (don’t mind him, the poor man is crazy),” they’re saying. didn’t you hear how fast they are trying to cover this up? It is disturbing in no small measure.

In a democratic country, Al Ya’koubi would have been pulled out of the car and handcuffed at the scene; he would be sitting in jail waiting to appear before a judge to be charged with assault and battery on, and attempted murder of a uniformed police officer during the course of official duties. But here in Morocco, the sentence had already been cast the moment he shot and kicked you like a piece of trash, then calmly, remorselessly sat in his car making phone calls and waiting for your colleagues. You would think an insane man would turn his weapon against the crowd.

In a democratic country, even cops are not authorized fragmentary rounds because their use is inhumane and causes devastating internal injury. They are however used by criminals. 

In a democratic country, even if, in the goodness of your heart, you decided to forgive your attacker, the government, as a true representative of the people, out of concern for their safety, would not concede its right to unleash the full wrath of the law on a psychopathic criminal who represents a serious danger to people. But here in Morocco, the safety and comfort of your high ranking attacker supersedes that of the common people; he is above the law. From a distorted perspective, you could say that the government is his representative against you. 

Does the uniform you so proudly wear make you a representative of the law? A protector of the people? Does it command respect? Not by all it seems. Is there a law that punishes those who disrespect a uniformed officer (let alone shooting and then kicking him)? Of course there is. Will it apply to Al Ya’koubi? Let’s use Erraji as a standard for this one.

Are we all equal before the law, or are some more equal than others? 

But I was told that the king does not stand for such overbearing, criminal attitudes as that displayed by Al Ya’koubi, nor does he stand for the actions of the officials who, by their toadyism, deride his efforts to drive Morocco into the 21st century.

This is an epochal moment. Let us hope.

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008

FRMA, “Rachid Ramzi” ca vous dit quelque chose?

Moroccan athletes do bring in the gold, but not for Morocco. It goes to tell you that Moroccan athletes have the potential to achieve internationally competitive results if only they were surrounded by competent and professional cadres. Rachid Ramzi left Morocco in 2002 disenchanted by the unprofessional and sardonic treatment of the Fédération Royale Marocaine d’Athlétisme (FRMA). Bahrain recognized a good investment and is maximizing on it. Many other Moroccan athletes, who were less fortunate than Ramzi, simply gave up their dream to achieve international renown because of the incompetence of FRMA leadership and staff. What about Said Aouita and Hicham El Gerrouj you might ask; a sad record for FRMA to have formed only two world class athletes in over two decades. Mark my word; after the Olympic Games, many more Moroccan athletes will double-time into warmer foreign embraces.

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008

Iraq And Kurdish Nationalism: After Sectarianism, Ethnocentrism

 

I visited most cities and towns of the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan enclave which replaced the Iraqi flag by a tri-colored bright star centered flag; I talked to Kurds from different denominations and all walks of life, to include government officials. I’ve discovered that they are very hospitable people who have adapted to and in instances survived the political changes the region has known, thus preserving a memory of their historical imperativeness. The Saddam regime had targeted the Kurds and sought their eradication for most of its tenure; government orchestrated mass killings, arbitrary detention, and displacement were frequent, but since the fall of Saddam’s despotic regime, they unabashedly celebrate the distinctiveness of their language, folklore, and history while embracing the ethnic and religious diversity of Iraq of which they consider themselves proud citizens. This aspect of the Kurdish character is one of the reasons thousands of Iraqis, Sunnis, Shi’a, and Christians, flocked to Kurdistan to escape the ravages of the sectarian and ideological conflicts gnawing at Baghdad, Basra, and Al-Anbar. Inter-ethnicity marriages and economic factors have, throughout history, strengthened the kinship between the Kurds and their Arab, Turkman, and Persian neighbors.

 

The Kurds’ pride in their heritage is unfortunately being corrupted into politicized ethnocentrism by the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), a convergence of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the two main Kurdish militant groups in Iraq. The KDP and the PUK have different political aspirations, but decided to unite on nationalist grounds to maximize on their alliance with the United States. It is partly thanks to this alliance that the relative security and economic prosperity Kurdistan enjoys are an undeniable fact.

 

The KRG is engaged in a political path disadvantageous to the unified political sphere of Iraq its Prime Minister, Nechirvan Barzani, claims to be an integral part of. It operates as a fully functional government and independently from the Iraqi central government (ICG) in Baghdad. The decision making process of its appointed officials is alienated from and rarely seeks the approbation of the ICG.  When Ashti Hawrami, the Kurdish Natural Resources minister – who answers only to the KRG president who appointed him, Massoud Barazani, and the Kurdish parliament – signed lucrative production sharing oil contracts (PSC) with a number of large foreign corporations, the Iraqi oil minister, Hussein Al Shahrastani, was never consulted. The KRG contends that such contracts are legal and do not transgress the Iraqi constitution. Opponents of the Kurdish initiative within the ICG are led by Al Shahrastani; they argue that the KRG’s deals were not made with the best interest of the Iraqi people in mind and consider the its actions a vindication against the Iraqi Arabs whom it sees as complicit to the persecution of Kurds by the Ba’ath party. Al Shahrastani whose criticism increased to outright condemnation before the stubbornness of the KRG to rescind the deals threatened to blacklist any firm that sign Kurd oil deals from gaining contracts for the rest of Iraq. Even some members of the KRG, such as MP Pishtiwan Ahmed, believe that the exclusion of the ICG from international contracts pertaining to Kurdistan are illegal and will certainly hamper “the return of disputed areas” such as Kirkuk and Khanaqeen, both oil rich regions, and which the KRG seeks, through judicial and extrajudicial venues, to annex to its three Kurdish provinces.

 

The Ba’ath party subjected the Kirkuk province to a forceful Arabisation campaign. During the 1980s, Saddam expelled 120,000 Kurds and other ethnicities from Kirkuk and brought thousands of Arabs from other parts of Iraq offering them enticing relocation packages. Article 140 of the current Iraqi constitution is designed to remedy this injustice and calls for a referendum to determine whether Kirkuk, Salah Al Din, Diyala, and Ninawa should be annexed by the KRG territories. The referendum, initially scheduled for 15 November 2007, was postponed numerous times. The Kurdish Alliance claims that the delays are for technical reason. The truth is that the KRG has initiated a vicious operation, similar in principle to Saddam’s Al Anfal campaign, targeting Arabs. The Peshmerga and Kurdish intelligence operatives have subjected the Arabs residing in Kirkuk to intimidation and displacement and facilitated an influx of Kurds into the city in an attempt to gerrymander electoral boundaries. So far, thousands have been relocated and over 1,500 Arabs have been detained by the Kurds on charges of terrorism. Arab politicians in the city, who have been boycotting the local government, say that those charges are fabricated.

 

The KRG’s hegemonic agenda extends to Mosul, the multiethnic fulcrum of northern Iraq. The city has been described by American and Iraqi officials as the last urban bastion of Al Qaeda in Mesopotemia and other Sunni terrorist groups. On the western side of Mosul, a mostly Sunni Arab section of the city, the Peshmerga, active participants in the Umm Al Rabiain operation along with U.S. and Iraqi troops, explicitly target Arab residents and businesses threatening them to vacate their residences or risk detention on terrorism charges. The situation became even more precarious when the Arab residents of the city started abetting terrorist and insurgent groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), Ansar Al Islam (AAI), Army of Muhammed (AoM), and the 1920 Revolution Brigade in order to benefit from their protection.

 

Within the Kurdish territories, the KRG imposes draconian restrictions on Iraqi Arabs seeking refuge from the ravages of war. Peshmerga troops manning checkpoints on all the roads leading into the Kurdish provinces explicitly ask drivers if they or any of their passengers are Arabs. Those who are identified as such are then asked out of the vehicles and subjected to an exhaustive scrutiny to determine their motives. The slightest anomaly in their paperwork could lead to detention. Even the carry of a handgun for protection, a right in Iraqi legislation, draws verbal and physical abuse, and sometimes death. Arab residents in Kurdistan need the vouching of a Kurdish sponsor and only receive temporary residency permits allowing them to stay in Kurdistan no longer than three months and within a specific area; travel within Kurdistan for Arabs is prohibited without authorization.

 

The geopolitical balance in northern Iraq is flimsy and requires constant calibration. To gratify Turkey, the US labeled the Kongra Gel, formerly known as the Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan – Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), as a terrorist organization. The Kongra Gel is a Marxist-Leninist and Kurdish nationalist militant organization in Turkey founded by Abdullah Ocalan in the 1970s. The organization, which is not recognized by the Turkish government, aims at creating an independent socialist Kurdish state. Its aspirations are not any different than those of the KRG. The same labeling standard the US applied to the Kongra Gel applies to the KRG. In downtown Erbil, one could find maps depicting the Greater Kurdistan. It extends from southern Turkey and northern Iran to the Strait of Hormuz. The KRG provides safe haven to operatives from the Kongra Gel and PJAK, another Kurdish militant group fighting for independence in Iran. Turkish and Iranian forces conduct joint operations targeting Kongra Gel and PJAK positions in the Qandil Mountains in Northern Iraq on a daily basis. Iranian infiltration in Iraqi Kurdistan runs deep and precedes US involvement in the region by decades. The surreptitious Iranian presence is also a contributing factor to the fragile peace in which Iraqi Kurdistan wallows.   

 

Without a doubt, the war in Iraq has been characterized by constant mutations. Now that the sectarian war is abating, an ethnic one looms in the distance.

 

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008

The Hiding Place of Peace in Iraq

I haven’t had a chance to write in more than a week. I was trying to find my way out of a dystopian Baghdad. A friend of mine finally informed me that one of his business partners, a liquor distributor who lives in Kurdistan and frequently travels to Baghdad to visit his customers, was willing to take me with him to Erbil, a city in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq. His name is Saman.

When Saman and I set out the next day, Baghdad, once called Madinat As Salam – the City of Peace, was shrouded in a blanket of dust and torn by the violent throes of deep-seated rifts; U.S. and Iraqi forces increased their operations tempo against Sadr City, a Jaysh Al Mehdi stronghold. The escalation of force led to the displacement of thousands of residents and the destruction of hundreds of private and public properties. Mortar rounds and missiles fell indiscriminately on Shi’a and Sunni neighborhoods just as frequently as on the International Zone.

The drive was a little over four hours. Saman refused to stop anywhere between Baghdad and Kirkuk. And I was not the one to convince him otherwise. It was only after we passed Kirkuk that he relaxed, easing up on the pedal; he opened the window and held the steering wheel with one hand as if we were just on a Sunday morning drive through the countryside. His demeanor was not the only noticeable change; the Iraqi landscape and people here are perceptibly different than those in the south. The rolling hills are greener, the air less dusty, the people more upbeat. Travelers crowded around roadside shacks selling sandwiches and soft drinks; Kurdish kids played with water much like American children would frolic around an open fire hydrant in the streets of New York City on a hot summer day.

People in Baghdad and those I saw along the route to Kirkuk seemed gloomier. Hardly anybody smiled. Circumspect people gripped by fear and so much desolation shuffled about at a sluggish pace. The xeric fields looked lifeless and the air laden with dust that refused to settle. The sinister mark of death was impregnable.

We passed vehicles that were packed like clown cars with Baghdadis seeking the reprieve the Kurdish region provided. Along the route, numerous police and military checkpoints on the northbound and southbound lanes checked vehicles and their passengers. The cities and villages – Al Khalis, Adhaim, Chay Khanah, Kirkuk – we passed resembled a humongous cluttered and chaotic construction site workers had long deserted. Most homes had bare cinderblock walls and unframed windows and doors. Their rusty brown metallic doors were bent and looked austere.          

Once in Erbil, a city the Kurds call Hauler, I went to the Assayish office in Saydan Street, Ankawa and provided my passport to the Residency Office. I was granted an extendable fifteen days visa. Over 50,000 displaced Iraqis have flocked to Erbil. Astoundingly, in a country mired in a bloody war, the city offers the luxury of a normal life; one in which parents feel confident enough to let children play in parks with minimal supervision, students in uniform regularly attend school, shops, cafés and restaurants bubble with life as residents stroll along city streets leisurely chatting. The only blaring sounds were those of cars going through the traffic.

The security measures and residency restriction imposed on the new Erbil residents are strict. A single applicant is granted a one month residency while a family receives three months. A local Kurd has to accompany the applicant and vouch for him/her. The residency is renewable once expired. The applicants have to carry their residency cards on them at all times. The card does not authorize the bearer to travel outside of Erbil. In order to do so, a separate permit and the endorsement of a local Kurd is required. Such measures remind the Iraqis of the police state Saddam once imposed on them. They wonder why an Iraqi citizen should be subjected to such restrictions in his own country. The answer from the Assayish is rather simple: security.

Saman and I stopped at a restaurant. I ordered a sandwich and a Hite. The whole meal was less than two dollars (fourteen dirhams.) I’m living large.

Two hours northwest of Erbil, Mosul. Another battleground where Iraqi forces have just launched operation Lion’s Roar.

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008