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 north west of Erbil, Mosul. Another battleground where Iraqi forces have just launched operation Lion’s Roar.

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008

I remember one May day in 2003 walking leisurely into a palace in the Tashree, in Baghdad; at its entrance stood two statues of Babylonian warriors; the sides of the entrance were engraved with the mythical Babylonian winged lions similar to those guarding the Gate of Xerxes at Persepolis. The Palace was bombed by U.S. missiles during the shock and awe phase of the conflict. Surprisingly, it was not looted by the mobs marauding through the streets of Baghdad. At the time, some courageous Iraqis recognizing a good business opportunity, would walk up to the soldiers manning check points around the People’s Palace and sell them cigarettes, sodas, and trinkets. The currency exchange ratio was $1/4000 Iraqi Dinars. The People’s Palace, located down the street from the 14 July roundabout, would later become home to L. Paul Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and is now the U.S. embassy. At the time, you could walk around Baghdad and feel totally safe; Al Qaeda had not set foot in Iraq yet and Jaysh Al Mahdi was non-existent. It was a period of relative calm. The palace I walked into was a stone’s throw from Al Sujood Palace and across the street from the Ba’ath party headquarters. The whole area is now enclosed within the International Zone.

In one side of the garden, there was a big cage. A few soldiers belonging to an Army ODA stood by the cage talking. Inside that cage were two lionesses and a lion. They were emaciated and looked tired. The soldiers informed me that the animals probably hadn’t eaten since the war started. They were discussing how they could help save them. There was the Zawra park zoo a short driving distance from there, but they wouldn’t move the lions without adequate cages, tranquilizer guns, and expert guidance and training. Besides, they had “reconned” the zoo and had found it in shambles: a number of animals had escaped from damaged cages; it lacked water, electricity, and food. The plight of the animals remaining in the zoo was deplorable. The soldiers finally decided that it would be better to just keep the lions in their cages for the time being while feeding them once a day. Decidedly, a bowl of milk would not have being enough. There was an urgent need for fresh meat. Lots of it. One of the soldiers, a chief, informed me that “RUMINT (rumor intelligence) has it that Uday fed these lions people he had a grudge against. Sometimes, when he runs out of options, he would serve them prisoners and was known to stand watching as his lions tore the poor bastards apart.” Feeding them humans, prisoners or not, was totally out of the question; it’s uncivilized.

Uday’s palace, along with Qusay’s, was later demolished. The sprawling new U.S. embassy, still unoperational, claimed the lot. 

I left the soldiers debating and continued my exploration. Days later, I was informed that the soldiers found a source of meat for the lions. In Saddam’s complex of palaces near the international airport, they located a sizable grassy enclosure housing antelopes. They would hunt one or two antelopes every couple of days and feed them to the lions.

Recently, I was strolling among joyous children and their relaxed parents in the Zawra Park when I came upon the lions’ cage. There were a few adult lions and two cubs. Zoo employees say that the adult lions once belonged to Uday. They looked healthy, but still tired. I stood before that cage and looked at them as if recognizing long lost friends. The cubs stayed close to the lionesses.

The zoo is entirely restored now and is being hailed as a successful reconstruction project completed by coalition forces. New animals have been brought in; exhibits have been mended; veterinarians have been hired to tend to the animals daily; zoos from around the world and animal rights organizations volunteered trainers to school Iraqi zookeepers. The zoo makeover cost the U.S. $2.15 million. The city also allots $400,000.00 annually for its up keeping. Depending on the security situation, the zoo receives 8000 to 10000 visitors per week. The cover charge is 20 cents a person. The zoo is also one of the few public areas in Baghdad benefiting from a heavy security detail protecting it from the ongoing war in the rest of the country.

Sitting on a bench looking at Iraqi parents enjoying quality time with their clamoring children in the security of the zoo, I couldn’t help wonder if, maybe, so many visitors to the zoo come to get a glimpse at what a future Iraq would look like. The zoo animals, after all, are provided uninterrupted utilities and enjoy better security, adequate medical attention, and fresher food than most Iraqis.

The lions, looking at the visitors standing before their cages, are probably telling their cubs: “in the old undemocratic good days, we used to eat them.” Not far from the lions’ cage, in a fenced-off area, the zoo raises donkeys. Every other day, a donkey is euthanized and fed to the lions.

Nobody speaks for the expendable donkeys. We have so many of them in the Arab world.

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008 

I have started a new poetry forum titled THE MOROCCAN DRIFT GENERATION POETS. You can visit the site HERE. I would like to make it a venue for Moroccans living abroad to post their poetry. I have already posted some of mine. I am still refining the site, but please, feel free to stop by, read, and leave comments. If you wish to post a poem on the site and be added as a contributor, contact me at cabalafuse@hotmail.com. Provide a brief bio.

The Iraqi government has finally put its finger on what it believes to be the leading cause of violence in Iraq. It’s the toy guns. Toy guns and fireworks engender in Iraqi children an increasingly aggressive behavior resulting in criminality. So much so that a parliamentary committee, seriously alarmed about rampant violence in the country and concerned by the widespread circulation of toy guns among children decided to draft a bill to ban the importing of toy guns and fireworks into Iraq.

Samira Al-Moussawi, head of the parliament’s committee on children and women, states: “the culture of violence has prevailed in our society and controlled the Iraqi family.” No kidding!

The bill proposes that anybody caught with a toy gun will be fined $2,500 or jailed for at least three years. I think if the bill passes, violence in Iraq will drastically decrease.

Some Iraqi children already switched to real guns; there are no laws against in Iraq prohibiting the possession of real guns and explosives. 

The real issue is the increased numbers of Iraqi children suffering from post-traumatic syndrome as a result of the war; the children here are exposed, on a daily basis, to murderous violence perpetrated by adults carrying real guns and setting off real bombs. There is a complete lack of adequate medical cadres and facilities to attend to these children.

Toy guns? It’s not the toy guns; it’s the examples these children see in their homes and neighborhoods.  

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008

Maliki’s crackdown on the Mehdi army to retake Basra has put to the test the Iraqi troops – more than 15,000 of them - British and U.S. military advisors qualified as battle ready. They were not. They were incompetent troops sent in to fight with inadequate gear and insufficient water, food, and ammunition; the Iraqi army’s 14^th division, for instance, lacked 74 per cent of the equipment necessary to be combat ready. The Mehdi army, a militia that is trained and financed by Iran, stalled the Iraqi army’s offensive in most of Basra by dividing and isolating its units, thus cutting their logistical lines. Iraqi units were unable to sustain the operational tempo necessary to win such offensive; they kept running out of ammunition. Additionally, the Iraqi army was beset by a high rate of desertions precipitating its defeat; one Iraqi brigade suffered 1,200 desertions within the first two hours of operations. The 1,300 men strong Iraqi police in Basra refused to deploy into the city. 

At the last minute, when Maliki realized that his initiative (retaking Basra) was based on alarmingly poor judgment, he lobbied to have a cease fire brokered. The combat operations ended in a stalemate.

The second and ongoing operation in Basra is yielding positive results. The Iraqi army has regained control over most of the city, but only because the brunt of the fighting and the uninterrupted logistical support to sustain it are spearheaded by U.S. and British troops. British troops are indeed back to patrolling the street of Basra only months after officially handing it over to the Iraqi government.

Despite a noticeable involvement of Iraqi forces in tactical operations in Basra, Baghdad, and elsewhere in Iraq (except in Kurdistan where the Peshmerga forces have proved more apt at maintaining security,) the security situation is worsening. The lead cause for such deterioration is the Maliki’s inability to deal politically and militarily with the Sadrist, which constitutes an opposition to reckon with for his party, whose support base and capabilities project them as a parallel political and military entity in Iraq. The situation is turning into such shambles that Bush announced he was suspending U.S. troop reduction in Iraq. 

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008

A highly critical report written by Joseph Collins, a former senior Pentagon official, and published by the National Institute for Strategic studies, a Department of Defense research center, casts doubt on Bush’s prevision of a U.S. victory in Iraq calling the war a “major debacle” and its outcome “in doubt.”

According to the study, the strategy of the Bush administration has been undermined, time and again, by the former Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who bypassed the Joint Chief of Staff in most of the decisions he made and inveigled military commanders into reshaping their units into compact forces with higher mobility and engaging into lightening fast operations. Such concepts were the total opposite of what would have been needed to achieve success in Iraq. The report also lays the blame at the feet of Bush’s imperious senior national security advisors at the time Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley who advised in favor of using military power and pressure when diplomacy was the better option.

The report, however, failed to discuss Paul Bremer’s strategic blunders as the viceroy of Iraq following the fall of the Ba’athist regime. Paul Bremer was in such a disconnect with Iraqi homebred leadership and unaware of the extent of disarray brewing just outside the heavily guarded gates of the People’s Palace, that he signed and obdurately enacted laws that have proven to be disastrous to the overall U.S. strategy in Iraq.

The report concludes that instead of enhancing the U.S. national security, the Bush administration’s strategy has turned Iraq into “an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East.” In addition to dramatically straining the U.S. armed forces, this strategy has exacted on the U.S. a serious political cost and damaged its standing in the world.

The Moroccan poet Abdallah Zrika published a new collection of poems titled “Ibratou Lwoujoud” – “The needle of Being.” Abdellah Zrika, to me, is the Bukowski of Morocco in the sense that his poetry is characterized by the integration of everyday language into a literature the academicians envisage as belonging to a higher culture. From a thematic perspective, Zrika and Bukowski are worlds apart. Zrika’s themes are more existential and metaphysical; they deal with the existence of man not as the center of the universe, but rather one of its organic components; Zrika does not see man as having more value than other organically integral elements of this world such as, say, insects, birds, and plants. Through those trimmed and textured lines of words that stack up to form his poetry, Zrika tries to make sense of his world through language and emotions. The correlation between words and life is palpable in his work; he himself says: “words are a precious thing; everything can live in them… and especially poetry, the ultimate threshold of words.” The power of Zrika’s words landed him in jail for two years when six of his poems were classified by the Moroccan government as being “morally dangerous.” Pierre Joris translated some of Zrika’s poetry which was published in two American literary reviews: Soft Target and Bombay Gin. The French poet Bernard Noel also translated some of his books. In addition to “The Needle of Being,” Zrika also published “Dance of the head and the rose,” 1977; “Rires de l’arbre à palabres,” l’Harmattan, 1982 ; “Black Candles,”  La Différence (Paris), 1998 ; “Petites Proses,” L’Escampette, 1998 ; “Echelles de la Métaphysique,” L’Escampette, 2000 ; “The Colour of Distance,” ed. Stefan Weidner, Beck Verlag, 2000.

The PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write award this year goes to Yang Tongyan, also known by the pen name Yang Tianshui. Yang, a Chinese journalist, poet, and novelist, is currently serving a 12-year prison sentence after being convicted of subverting state power by posting anti-government articles on the internet and organizing a branch of the China Democratic Party, an outlawed political movement.

On December 24, 2005, Yang was detained incommunicado at Dantu District Detention Centre in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province. His conviction and sentence were handed out on May 16, 2006 after a three-hour trial that was closed to the public.

This was not the first time Yang was imprisoned for his writings. He was arrested in 1990 and imprisoned for 10 years for denouncing the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.

According to cpj.org, the Committee to Protect Journalists – an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending press freedom worldwide, China currently has 29 journalists jailed on nebulous anti-state charges.

The PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write award, in addition to recognizing those who defend freedom of expression at a horrendous cost to themselves and their families, offers the symbolic prize of $10.000 to writers and journalists who are victims of oppressive regimes.

Rachid Nini will need 85 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write awards to extricate himself from the legal jam he is mired into.

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008

The Pulitzer Prize for fiction went to Junot Diaz for his first novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” It took him eleven years to write, but it has exceeded expectations. Here is what Powells.com says about the novel:

Leaping back and forth between the Dominican Republic and New Jersey, pouring across pages in a “combustible mix of slang and lyricism” (quoth Booklist), Oscar Wao bridges several generations and distinct cultures with exhilarating doses of Caribbean history and old-fashioned pulse-pounding drama. Politics, corruption, romance, fantasy, faith, despair — the novel, as Díaz explains, contains multitudes. Kirkus, in a starred review, called it “a compelling, sex-fueled, 21st-century tragi-comedy with a magical twist.”

Powells.com, by the way, has a great interview with him here.

I read Diaz’s first published work “Drown” years ago; an outstanding collection of short stories dealing with Latin American immigrants struggling with integration and redefining their new American identities. I enjoyed each and every one of the ten stories it contained. A must read.

Last week, fighting erupted in the streets and everything became source of fear to the people living in Baghdad and most of Iraq. People shunned away from going out shopping, children from playing, or just visiting friends. They suddenly ceased to partake in the normal daily activities that make life worthwhile. Along with fear, death struck in places where safety was thought won. Many Baghdadis were shot dead in their living rooms or backyards by stray bullets; the wailing rose again. The inconsolable crying of bereaved children, wives, husbands, and parents poured out of torn hearts and filled the air of this torn country. The streets in Sanak were eerily silent; the steel doors of its shops padlocked. The residents huddled in the relative security their homes offered. They knew that sooner or later they would have to come out. The curfew imposed by the Maliki government was so suddenly announced that few had time to stock up on provisions.

The fighting too erupted quite suddenly. Out of the blue, this man the majority of Iraqis know to be highly partisan in his policies and deride as being an Iranian spy decided to go to Basra himself and weed out the Sadrist militias, themselves Iranian surrogate foot soldiers. The military move was not coordinated for support with U.S. commanders. The people I talked to tell me that the Iraqis are not dupe; the fighting was orchestrated as part of a well thought out plan to show the U.S. that Iran holds the safety of Iraq in the cup of its hand. Iran could make the Tigris flow with blood if so it wishes. The message to the U.S. congress is loud and clear; the period of relative calm Iraq knew is not subsequent to the surge; it is a strategic move by the Iranian government to force the next U.S. administration to seriously consider negotiating with it. Peace will never be attainable here in Iraq if it is grounded in policies that do not advance the Iranian agenda.

The operations Maliki was overseeing himself (whatever happened to delegation) were disastrous. His incompetence extended to military strategy. The defeat of his police force which was beset by mass desertions was eminent. The fighting finally stopped after a deal between the Jaysh Al Mahdi leadership, which happened to be in Iran, and the Maliki government was brokered by the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Iranian military force the U.S. listed not long ago as a terrorist organization.

During that violent week, the International Zone (IZ) was a target to constant shelling from Sadr City, a notorious shi’ia neighborhood in the eastern side of  Baghdad. The neighborhood was infamous for its high crime rate even during Saddam’s time. It was then known as Saddam City. The rockets that rained on the IZ during that week were fairly accurate and of a caliber that required sophisticated training. The house of Maliki was hit on numerous occasions; of course, he was in Basra overseeing (wink, wink) offensive police operations. 

The curfew made the city seem ghostly. Eerily silent except for the thundering sounds of bombs and the clatter of small arms fire that sometimes seemed so close and intrusive. Those scratching a living on a day by day basis, the majority of Baghdadis, suffered the most. They could not leave their neighborhoods to go to work. Some were caught by the curfew away from their homes and had to sneak like pariahs on foot from street to street to reunite with their families. In some places, the grief turned to rage. Women and children threw rocks at Sadrist fighters in their neighborhoods who, apparently, would use their homes as cover and engage U.S. forces to draw their suppressive fire on the residents. After days of raging fights, the streets of Baghdad regained their calm; the people reclaimed their streets. Everybody seems to know the drill now. The collection of dead bodies started in earnest. Children carrying brooms cleaned their neighborhoods. As soon as the stores opened, women with heavy bags under their eyes rushed out to shop. A few smiled, but everybody looked tired; haggard and unshaven men filled the streets to check on family and friends; a few children looked inquisitive as if something was stolen from them.  

Soon, people will demonstrate in the streets demanding their dignified and peaceful lives back. Many will die in the process.

Sometimes, life has a way of making one move on with velleity. I hate forcing myself to write, but this past month, I’ve found myself doing just that. The harder I try the more difficult it gets. I have decided that it’s time for me to move out of Baghdad and settle someplace else. I’ll keep you posted as to where.

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008