Four years on in Iraq, will I live or die?
Ahmed Rasheed
IRAQ: When US forces invaded Iraq four years ago, I never
expected to find myself three weeks later standing guard outside my
house with an AK-47 assault rifle to ward off looters.
It was April 9, 2003, the same day a statue of Saddam Hussein was
pulled down live on television. U.S. forces had swept virtually
unopposed into the capital. Saddam had fled.
The looters who were ransacking Baghdad made me feel uneasy as they
sped past my home, their cars stacked with anything they could lay their
hands on.
But I dared to think about a better future. I did not dwell on the
chaos that accompanied Saddam’s collapse, preferring to enjoy new-found
freedoms. A few days later I took out a satellite dish I had kept hidden
for five years in a big pigeon cage. Being caught with one meant prison
under Saddam. I used a screwdriver to scrawl “Satellite Freedom” into
the wall.
Those days of hope were short-lived.
I first tasted the sour new reality when American troops arrested my
70-year-old brother-in-law in May 2003 in the city of Samarra, where my
wife’s family lives.
Saeed Hassan’s family was distraught. We eventually found out he had
been taken to the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. I was a lawyer, so I
began going there, trying to find out why he had been arrested.
Hassan spent a year in Abu Ghraib. He was killed in April 2004 when
insurgents fired mortar bombs at the jail. An American soldier once told
me Hassan had been detained because he was a security risk. I never
found out why.
With Iraq turned upside down, I did not return to my job as a lawyer
for the Iraqi Customs Office until November 2003.
That lasted until September 2005, when I won a large case. The losing
party made veiled threats so I decided to quit. I began working for
Reuters a month later.
When I thought the violence in Iraq could not get worse, it did.
Bombers believed to be from al Qaeda entered a revered Shi’ite mosque
in Samarra at dawn on Feb. 22, 2006, setting off charges that destroyed
the shrine.
That act sparked a wave of sectarian bloodletting. When word of the
bombing started coming in, I was in the Reuters office in Baghdad. I
called my wife, Sura, to tell her to be careful, especially because she
is from Samarra.
Minutes later, she called back in grief. Shi’ite militiamen had just
dragged my sister-in-law, Um Ziad, a widow, from her home in Baghdad and
shot her dead simply for being a Sunni. She was 62.
Four months later, a neighbour called to tell me a bomb had gone off
outside my home, badly wounding Sura in the leg. Decent medical care in
Baghdad was a thing of the past.
I took her to Jordan for treatment. To the outside world, Iraq is
synonymous with car bombs, death squads and fear.
Electricity blackouts happen every day. Queues for petrol in a
country with the world’s third largest oil reserves stretch for hundreds
of metres. Almost every day I wake up, wondering if I will live or
die.Last February, a roadside bomb exploded right outside my home. It
had apparently been intended for a passing Iraqi army patrol but hit a
pick-up truck.
It decapitated the driver and blew out the windows of my house,
spattering blood and bits of flesh on the walls.
I cannot think of an Iraqi who has not been touched in some way by
the violence of the past four years. When I reflect on what we have been
through, I sometimes recall my first encounter with an American soldier.
It was three days after U.S. tanks had entered Baghdad. I opened my
door to find the soldier crouched on the street and holding a pump
action shot gun.
I asked him if there was a problem. He looked at me and said: “Sir,
we are here to protect you. We are here to liberate you from Saddam’s
regime and bring you elections to choose your president freely.”
Baghdad, Thursday, Reuters |
