[lit-ideas] Letter from Baghdad
- From: "Andreas Ramos" <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Lit-Ideas" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2004 09:30:37 -0700
When this email first appeared, I wondered if it was real, especially when I
got several
copies. I got yet more copies this morning, so I looked it up.
Yes, it's real. She wrote this as a private email to several friends. One of
them sent it
to another, and now, it's being massively distributed.
She is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and she is writing from Baghdad.
This is the
situation in Iraq, despite what Mr. Bush tells us.
"A lengthy letter from Baghdad she recently sent to friends "has rapidly become
a global
chain mail," Fassihi told Jim Romenesko on Wednesday after it was finally
posted at the
Poynter Institute's Web site. She confirmed writing the letter. "
at
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000650551
The Wall Street Journal has defended her as well.
http://www.nypost.com/business/19818.htm
Here's the complete version of her email. http://www.poynter.org/forum/?id=misc
yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com
From Baghdad
A Wall Street Journal Reporter's E-Mail to Friends
by Farnaz Fassihi
Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being
under virtual
house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a chance to
see the world,
explore the exotic, meet new people in far away lands, discover their ways and
tell stories
that could make a difference.
Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq has defied all
those reasons.
I am house bound. I leave when I have a very good reason to and a scheduled
interview. I
avoid going to people's homes and never walk in the streets. I can't go grocery
shopping any
more, can't eat in restaurants, can't strike a conversation with strangers,
can't look for
stories, can't drive in any thing but a full armored car, can't go to scenes of
breaking
news stories, can't be stuck in traffic, can't speak English outside, can't
take a road
trip, can't say I'm an American, can't linger at checkpoints, can't be curious
about what
people are saying, doing, feeling. And can't and can't. There has been one too
many close
calls, including a car bomb so near our house that it blew out all the windows.
So now my
most pressing concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay
alive and make
sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am a security personnel
first, a reporter
second.
It's hard to pinpoint when the 'turning point' exactly began. Was
it April when
the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and
Jish Mahdi
declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when Sadr City, home to ten percent
of Iraq's
population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the
insurgency
began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of
Iraq? Despite
President Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it
was a
'potential' threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to 'imminent
and active
threat,' a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades
to come.
Iraqis like to call this mess 'the situation.' When asked 'how are
thing?' they
reply: 'the situation is very bad."
What they mean by situation is this: the Iraqi government doesn't
control most
Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each day around the country
killing and
injuring scores of innocent people, the country's roads are becoming impassable
and littered
by hundreds of landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers,
there are
assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The situation, basically, means a
raging
barbaric guerilla war. In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured
in Baghdad
alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health -- which was
attempting an
exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers -- has now stopped
disclosing them.
Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.
A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr City yesterday. He said
young men
were openly placing improvised explosive devices into the ground. They melt a
shallow hole
into the asphalt, dig the explosive, cover it with dirt and put an old tire or
plastic can
over it to signal to the locals this is booby-trapped. He said on the main
roads of Sadr
City, there were a dozen landmines per every ten yards. His car snaked and
swirled to avoid
driving over them. Behind the walls sits an angry Iraqi ready to detonate them
as soon as an
American convoy gets near. This is in Shiite land, the population that was
supposed to love
America for liberating Iraq.
For journalists the significant turning point came with the wave of
abduction
and kidnappings. Only two weeks ago we felt safe around Baghdad because
foreigners were
being abducted on the roads and highways between towns. Then came a frantic
phone call from
a journalist female friend at 11 p.m. telling me two Italian women had been
abducted from
their homes in broad daylight. Then the two Americans, who got beheaded this
week and the
Brit, were abducted from their homes in a residential neighborhood. They were
supplying the
entire block with round the clock electricity from their generator to win
friends. The
abductors grabbed one of them at 6 a.m. when he came out to switch on the
generator; his
beheaded body was thrown back near the neighborhoods.
The insurgency, we are told, is rampant with no signs of calming
down. If any
thing, it is growing stronger, organized and more sophisticated every day. The
various
elements within it-baathists, criminals, nationalists and Al Qaeda-are
cooperating and
coordinating.
I went to an emergency meeting for foreign correspondents with the
military and
embassy to discuss the kidnappings. We were somberly told our fate would
largely depend on
where we were in the kidnapping chain once it was determined we were missing.
Here is how it
goes: criminal gangs grab you and sell you up to Baathists in Fallujah, who
will in turn
sell you to Al Qaeda. In turn, cash and weapons flow the other way from Al
Qaeda to the
Baathisst to the criminals. My friend Georges, the French journalist snatched
on the road to
Najaf, has been missing for a month with no word on release or whether he is
still alive.
America's last hope for a quick exit? The Iraqi police and National
Guard units
we are spending billions of dollars to train. The cops are being murdered by
the dozens
every day-over 700 to date -- and the insurgents are infiltrating their ranks.
The problem
is so serious that the U.S. military has allocated $6 million dollars to buy
out 30,000 cops
they just trained to get rid of them quietly.
As for reconstruction: firstly it's so unsafe for foreigners to
operate that
almost all projects have come to a halt. After two years, of the $18 billion
Congress
appropriated for Iraq reconstruction only about $1 billion or so has been spent
and a chuck
has now been reallocated for improving security, a sign of just how bad things
are going
here.
Oil dreams? Insurgents disrupt oil flow routinely as a result of
sabotage and
oil prices have hit record high of $49 a barrel. Who did this war exactly
benefit? Was it
worth it? Are we safer because Saddam is holed up and Al Qaeda is running
around in Iraq?
Iraqis say that thanks to America they got freedom in exchange for
insecurity.
Guess what? They say they'd take security over freedom any day, even if it
means having a
dictator ruler.
I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if Saddam Hussein were
allowed to run
for elections he would get the majority of the vote. This is truly sad.
Then I went to see an Iraqi scholar this week to talk to him about
elections
here. He has been trying to educate the public on the importance of voting. He
said,
"President Bush wanted to turn Iraq into a democracy that would be an example
for the Middle
East. Forget about democracy, forget about being a model for the region, we
have to salvage
Iraq before all is lost."
One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For
those of us on
the ground it's hard to imagine what if any thing could salvage it from its
violent downward
spiral. The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this
country as a
result of American mistakes and it can't be put back into a bottle.
The Iraqi government is talking about having elections in three
months while
half of the country remains a 'no go zone'-out of the hands of the government
and the
Americans and out of reach of journalists. In the other half, the disenchanted
population is
too terrified to show up at polling stations. The Sunnis have already said
they'd boycott
elections, leaving the stage open for polarized government of Kurds and Shiites
that will
not be deemed as legitimate and will most certainly lead to civil war.
I asked a 28-year-old engineer if he and his family would
participate in the
Iraqi elections since it was the first time Iraqis could to some degree elect a
leadership.
His response summed it all: "Go and vote and risk being blown into pieces or
followed by the
insurgents and murdered for cooperating with the Americans? For what? To
practice democracy?
Are you joking?"
Farnaz Fassihi, a Wall Street Journal reporter sent this report as
an e-mail to
friends.
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