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Saturday, April 28, 2007

Mission accomplished
Posted by Jill | 7:24 AM
Riverbend is an Iraqi blogger whose heartbreaking first-person accounts of the impact of the Iraq war on the very real people who live there have been must-reading for the last few years. Now she is throwing in the towel on the country that she has called home all her life:

The Great Wall of Segregation is the wall the current Iraqi government is building (with the support and guidance of the Americans). It's a wall that is intended to separate and isolate what is now considered the largest 'Sunni' area in Baghdad -- let no one say the Americans are not building anything. According to plans the Iraqi puppets and Americans cooked up, it will 'protect' A'adhamiya, a residential/mercantile area that the current Iraqi government and their death squads couldn't empty of Sunnis.

The wall, of course, will protect no one. I sometimes wonder if this is how the concentration camps began in Europe. The Nazi government probably said, "Oh look -- we're just going to protect the Jews with this little wall here -- it will be difficult for people to get into their special area to hurt them!" And yet, it will also be difficult to get out.

The Wall is the latest effort to further break Iraqi society apart. Promoting and supporting civil war isn't enough, apparently -- Iraqis have generally proven to be more tenacious and tolerant than their mullahs, ayatollahs, and Vichy leaders. It's time for America to physically divide and conquer -- like Berlin before the wall came down or Palestine today. This way, they can continue chasing Sunnis out of "Shia areas" and Shia out of "Sunni areas."

I always hear the Iraqi pro-war crowd interviewed on television from foreign capitals (they can only appear on television from the safety of foreign capitals because I defy anyone to be publicly pro-war in Iraq). They refuse to believe that their religiously inclined, sectarian political parties fueled this whole Sunni/Shia conflict. They refuse to acknowledge that this situation is a direct result of the war and occupation. They go on and on about Iraq's history and how Sunnis and Shia were always in conflict and I hate that. I hate that a handful of expats who haven't been to the country in decades pretend to know more about it than people actually living there.

I remember Baghdad before the war -- one could live anywhere. We didn't know what our neighbors were -- we didn't care. No one asked about religion or sect. No one bothered with what was considered a trivial topic: are you Sunni or Shia? You only asked something like that if you were uncouth and backward. Our lives revolve around it now. Our existence depends on hiding it or highlighting it -- depending on the group of masked men who stop you or raid your home in the middle of the night.

On a personal note, we've finally decided to leave. I guess I've known we would be leaving for a while now. We discussed it as a family dozens of times. At first, someone would suggest it tentatively, because it was just a preposterous idea -- leaving one's home and extended family -- leaving one's country -- and to what? To where?

Since last summer, we had been discussing it more and more. It was only a matter of time before what began as a suggestion -- a last-case scenario -- soon took on solidity and developed into a plan. For the last couple of months, it has only been a matter of logistics. Plane or car? Jordan or Syria? Will we all leave together as a family? Or will it be only my brother and I at first?

After Jordan or Syria -- where then? Obviously, either of those countries is going to be a transit to something else. They are both overflowing with Iraqi refugees, and every single Iraqi living in either country is complaining of the fact that work is difficult to come by, and getting a residency is even more difficult. There is also the little problem of being turned back at the border. Thousands of Iraqis aren't being let into Syria or Jordan -- and there are no definite criteria for entry, the decision is based on the whim of the border patrol guard checking your passport.

[snip]

On the one hand, I know that leaving the country and starting a new life somewhere else -- as yet unknown -- is such a huge thing that it should dwarf every trivial concern. The funny thing is that it's the trivial that seems to occupy our lives. We discuss whether to take photo albums or leave them behind. Can I bring along a stuffed animal I've had since the age of four? Is there room for E.'s guitar? What clothes do we take? Summer clothes? The winter clothes too? What about my books? What about the CDs, the baby pictures?

The problem is that we don't even know if we'll ever see this stuff again. We don't know if whatever we leave, including the house, will be available when and if we come back. There are moments when the injustice of having to leave your country, simply because an imbecile got it into his head to invade it, is overwhelming. It is unfair that in order to survive and live normally, we have to leave our home and what remains of family and friends ... And to what?


Doesn't this sound eerily like something one of the tens of thousands of displaced residents of New Orleans might write? As I've spent time every evening and on weekends working to return our basement to pre-nor'easter condition, I've often thought about the people of New Orleans and of the many thousands of people now leaving Iraq and realized how fortunate I am. For the minor inconvenience of having to throw away a few possessions and strip the floor down to the concrete are really insignificant compared to the upheaval and the uncertainty these two populations, now exiled into diaspora in the aftermath of Bush administration botched policy, are enduring.

Imagine leaving everything you know, everything you've ever owned, everything that makes your home a home, and going someplace where you have no idea if you'll be welcomed, if you'll be safe. Imagine turning your back on your entire life for an uncertain future.

Aside from the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties that have resulted directly from the Bush Administration's misbegotten Iraq adventure, an adventure that will go down in history as one of the most heinous international crimes of our lifetime, there are other casualties as well -- casualties like Riverbend, who have chronicled the reality of what George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld hath wrought in their country and who potentially face ostracism and distrust everywhere they go.

Their tribulations are on all of our consciences.

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