Dahr Jamail writes for Tomdispatch.com. He was in Iraq in January 2004 traveling through villages and cities south of Baghdad while investigating the performance of the Bechtel Corporation in honoring their contractual obligations to restore the water supply in the region. He found in a village outside of Najaf, where both women and children collected water from a hole in the ground…the bottom of it. See…this was a broken pipe at the bottom of this hole. During a daily two-hour period of the day…when the power supply happens to be on…these poor people desperately gather what they can. This is their primary water source for the whole village. It turns out unfortunately that he learned that 8 children had died trying to cross a highway close by…just to get decent water from a local factory. Well…who’s to say that water was even really decent? Is this what our taxes have gone to…to these various so called construction companies to rebuild what was torn down from the ground up? Build schools…help them regain their water and electricity? What have these jokers been doing for over 5 years?

We have statistics from the World Health Organization that says 70% of Iraqis do not have access to clean water and 80% greatly lack decent sanitation. They get their water by any means possible even if it is at the bottom of a dirty wet hole. It may contain a waterborne disease, cause kidney stones, diarrhea, cholera, or nausea. These people over 5 years ago had water and electricity at their disposal. Now…they are killing themselves to get a dirty drink of water. A sovereign nation that had not attacked nor interfered with the United States in any way was summarily taken down brick-by-ancient-brick and reduced its population to horrendous violence, death and the basic amenities to live. To do this to children is the ultimate inhumane behavior…but that is just one of the many dishonorable things our administration shall be known for if I have anything to say about it.

We can go to our kitchen sink and turn on our own fresh cool water with a flick of the wrist. We don’t even have to think about it…we’ve had it all our lives. Imagine for a moment…if that were to change. Imagine living in a very hot climate and because of not having electricity but for a few hours possibly a day…you have no way to cool off. We all know that spells a death knell to the very old of age and babies. The Bush administration isn’t just bombing these people into oblivion…they are killing them off with their basic physical needs as humans. And in a World point of view…that is criminal in my opinion. For those evil-doers that he points his finger at and pounds his podium to make his pointless Bushisms…he himself is guilty of that which he condemns.

After what Jamail has witnessed he speaks of being able to get into his pantry and refrigerator for food in which he has plenty to feed a family for days. And then he recalls the 21% rate of chronic malnutrition among the children in Iraq…according to UNICEF, about 1 in 10 Iraqi children under the age of 5 is underweight. He said that 54% of Iraqis now live on less than a dollar a day. That is what the road to freedom and democracy has brought these poor people. We (Americans) all travel safely from place to place. We can go to the grocery store without fear of any reprisal…or a roadside bomb. There is no place the Iraqis can travel without fear. According to the 2007 Failed States Index…Iraq now is ranked as the planet’s second most unstable country…and we have an administration that is completely responsible for this. Oh, they’ll try to blame the Iraqis for not standing up better to fight the bitter fight…yet the administration is guilty of ruining their infrastructure to the point that they really have nothing to stand up for. These poor ordinary citizens that just want to live their former day to day lives…hardly have anything good to look forward to.

Jamail says…”having spent a fair amount of time in occupied Iraq, I now find living in the United States nothing short of a schizophrenic experience. Life in Iraq was traumatizing. It was impossible to be there and not be affected by apocalyptic levels of violence and suffering, unimaginable in this country. But here’s the weird thing: One long, comfortable plane ride later and you’re in Disneyland, or so it feels on returning to the United States. Sometimes it seems as if I’m in a bubble here that’s only moments away from popping. I find myself perpetually amazed at the height of consumerism and the vigorous pursuit of creature comforts that are the essence of everyday life in this country — and once defined my own life as well.”

That is a far cry from a water pipe at the bottom of a dirt hole spewing out a few hours of dirty water for people to scramble about trying to contain some of it. But I was also struck by his accounts of trying to communicate with his friends he had left behind in Iraq. He sites examples of different correspondence with people…all very interesting in the real picture it gives back to those of us that care about the Iraqis and how the toll of the war manifests itself in their lives. But one story of a friend particularly caught my attention that I wanted to share because we won’t get this information from our own media people. Our administration won’t allow us to receive this kind of dark side to the real world in Iraq.

He begins with…I have also been corresponding with “H”, who lives in the volatile Diyala province and has been a dear friend since my first trip to Iraq. He would visit me in Baghdad, bringing with him delicious home-cooked meals from his wife, insisting always that I be the one to eat the first morsel. A deeply religious man, his unfailing greeting, accompanied by a big hug, would always be: “You are my brother.” He was concerned about the perception that there were vast differences between Islam and Christianity. “Islam and Christianity are not so different…in fact they have many more similarities than differences.” He would often discuss this with U.S. soldiers in his city. Yet he was no admirer of imperialism.

Last summer in Syria, he and I visited the sprawling roman ruins of Palmyra. One evening, as we stood together overlooking the vast landscape of crumbling columns and sun-bleached walls in the setting sun, he turned to me and said, “Mr. Dahr, please do not be offended by what I want to say, but it makes me happy to see these ruins and remember that empires always fall because empires are never good for most people.”

It seems that after several weeks having not received any replies to several emails…Jamail wrote to a mutual friend…”M” and got this response: “My dear friend, it has been very long since I have written to you. I’m sorry. I was terribly busy. I have some very bad news. [H] was kidnapped by the members of al-Qaeda in Diyala 25 days ago and there is no news about him up to this moment. It’s a horrible situation. One cannot feel safe in this country. [H] was kidnapped as he was trying to get home. He was coming to Baquba to visit his parents, as he does every day. His oldest daughter who was with him told him that a car carrying several men was following them from the beginning of the street leading to his parents’ home. So, when he stopped to get his car in the garage, they got out of their car covering their faces and asked him to come with them for questioning. People in Diyala definitely know that such a thing means either killing or arresting for a few days. You may ask why I’m sure it is al-Quaeda. That is because no other group, including the U.S. military, dominated the whole city like they do.”

Much more happens and more emails before Jamail can find out the truth…in the meantime he is wracked with worry. This is information all Americans should be aware of in order to make some important future decisions regarding how we want or don’t want our country to be lead. We owe ourselves this information…we owe others to pass it along. Jamail said in one of H’s last emails sent soon after his return home from Syria earlier this summer, he described driving out of Baquba one afternoon. Ominously, he wrote: We left Baquba, which was sinking in a sea of utter chaos, worries, and instability. People there in that small town were scared of being kidnapped, killed, murdered or expelled. The entire security situation over there was deteriorating; getting to the worse. Jamail feels that passage might be read as H’s epitaph.

Please go to the link and read the entire article so you’ll know exactly what to say to the neo-cons when they start up with their rhetoric that everything is getting better in Iraq…because we know it isn’t.

Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist who has covered the Middle East for the last four years, with months of which were spent in occupied Iraq. Jamail is currently writing for Inter Press Service, Al-Jazeera English, and is a regular contributor to Tomdispatch.com. Jamail’s forthcoming book, “Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Independent Journalist in Occupied Iraq”…it will be released in October.

Article link: Alternet.org

Tags: al-Quaeda Iraq war environment terrorism Diyala kidnapping

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