M
MioMyo
Guest
Yet reality proves them delusionally wrong. The only reason for their
denials is their hatred of Bush and the political gamble they have invested
in aligning themselves with the head-lopping terrorists.
Which is why I no longer hold back labeling them the traitors they
continually prove themselves to be!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/22/AR2007112201568_pf.html
BAGHDAD, Nov. 22 -- Iraqis are returning to their homeland by the hundreds
each day, by bus, car and plane, encouraged by weeks of decreased violence
and increased security, or compelled by visa and residency restrictions in
neighboring countries and the depletion of their savings.
Those returning make up only a tiny fraction of the 2.2 million Iraqis who
have fled Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. But they represent the
largest number of returnees since February 2006, when sectarian violence
began to rise dramatically, speeding the exodus from Iraq.
Many find a Baghdad they no longer recognize, a city altered by blast walls
and sectarian rifts. Under the improved security, Iraqis are gingerly
testing how far their new liberties allow them to go. But they are also
facing many barriers, geographical and psychological, hardened by violence
and mistrust.
Days after she returned from Syria, 23-year-old Melal al-Zubaidi and a
friend went to the market on a pleasant night to eat ice cream. It was a
short walk, yet unthinkable only a month ago for a woman in the capital.
Still, her parents were nervous, and Zubaidi wore a head scarf and an
ankle-length skirt to avoid angering Islamic extremists.
The Zubaidis, a Shiite Muslim family, have yet to pass another boundary.
When they fled Iraq five months ago, a Sunni family took over their large
house in Dora, a sprawling neighborhood in southern Baghdad. When the
Zubaidis returned this month, they were too scared to ask the new occupants
to leave. So they rented a small apartment in Mashtal, a mostly Shiite
district.
"Security is better," said Melal al-Zubaidi, who has a degree in
engineering. "But we still have fear inside ourselves."
Over the past two months, the level of nearly every type of violence -- car
bombings, assassinations, suicide attacks -- has dropped from earlier this
year. The downturn is a result of a confluence of factors: This year, 30,000
U.S. military reinforcements were funneled into Baghdad and other areas.
Sunni tribes and insurgents turned against the al-Qaeda in Iraq insurgent
group and partnered with U.S. forces to patrol neighborhoods and towns.
Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, seeking to improve his movement's image,
ordered his Mahdi Army militia to freeze operations.
U.N. refugee officials estimate that 45,000 Iraqis returned from Syria last
month, while Iraqi officials say 1,000 are arriving each day.
The returnees find a capital that offers greater freedom of movement. Shops
are open later in many neighborhoods, and curfews have been reduced.
But those freedoms still come with constraints. Weddings, accompanied by
honking cars and lively bands, are reappearing on the streets, but they
still end before darkness falls. Visits to relatives and friends across
Baghdad are more possible but still hinge on which group or sect controls
each neighborhood. Some stores are selling alcohol, but fundamentalists
watch for those who breach their codes.
Luay Hashimi, 31, returned to his house in Dora with his wife and three
young children last month after fleeing to Syria nine months ago. Since
then, 11 other relatives who also had left for Syria -- Sunnis like him --
have come back, too.
Hashimi no longer sees bodies in the street when he opens his front door.
Sunni extremists no longer man checkpoints to search his vehicle for alcohol
or signs of collaboration with the government or the Americans. Roads are
being paved, and municipal workers are sprucing up parks and traffic
circles. His patch of Dora is now a fortress, surrounded by tall blast walls
that separate entire blocks.
"It's totally secured," said Hashimi, who was an intelligence officer during
the government of Saddam Hussein. But a few days ago, he drove across the
main highway to another section of Dora. He felt a familiar fear. "You're
lost there. You don't know who controls the area, Sunni or Shia, American
soldiers or Iraqi security forces. It's still chaotic."
He never drives on side streets, afraid of the unknown. On a recent day, he
wanted to visit a Shiite friend in Amil, a district controlled by the Mahdi
Army, whom he had not seen in a year. But his friend advised him not to
come. Hashimi felt relief. "I'm afraid to go to Shiite areas," he said.
Before Hashimi left Iraq, he used to pick up a friend every day from the
mixed enclave of Bayaa and take him to the security firm where they both
worked. But during his time in Syria, Shiite militias cleansed Bayaa of
Sunnis. "It's impossible for me to go there now," he said.
So he spends most of his days in his once-mixed neighborhood, now a mostly
Sunni area. A nearby tea shop is open until 10 p.m., but all other shops
close by 7 p.m. Under Hussein, they used to be open past midnight. The
walled-off streets have squeezed the pool of customers. Electricity, Hashimi
said, is still scarce.
Kareem Sadi Haadi, a civil engineer, did not want to return to Baghdad. Nor
did most of the Iraqis he knew in Syria. He and his family had escaped there
five months after the U.S. invasion. But he ran out of money after two
failed attempts to smuggle his family to Europe. Two weeks ago, they
returned to Karrada, the mostly Shiite district where the family once lived.
Today, they live in a rented apartment with furniture given to them by
relatives. Haadi said he is shocked by Baghdad's metamorphosis -- the
checkpoints, road closings, traffic jams, razor wire on buildings, and the
blast walls.
"Baghdad feels like a military base," said Haadi, 48, a Sunni. "Safety
without these barriers is real safety."
Although he has been back in the capital for two weeks, he has not yet seen
his sister who lives in the mainly Shiite neighborhood of Alam, controlled
by the Mahdi Army. She warned him that any stranger would be killed.
"Security is when I can get in my car at 10 p.m. and drive to see my
sister," Haadi said.
Four days ago, gunmen kidnapped a man outside the house of Haadi's in-laws,
also in Karrada.
"We don't go outside Karrada," said his wife, Anwar Mahdi, 43. "Now I am
afraid to go to my parents."
As soon as they can save enough money, Haadi said, they hope to go back to
Damascus. That could prove difficult. Syria now allows only Iraqis with
special visas to enter.
Melal al-Zubaidi is optimistic. When she fled to Syria, she was terrified to
drive through Anbar province, where Sunni militants were pulling Shiites
from buses and killing them. This time, the bus drove throughout the night.
"That comforted me," Zubaidi said. "I expect that security will improve day
by day. People are tired of conflict."
Still, she has lines that she is not yet willing to cross. She has not
visited her old university, fearing car bombs or kidnappings. In a nation
where neighbors are often as close as relatives, Zubaidi is wary of trusting
people in her community. "We're still afraid to meet new people," she said.
"This district is still strange for me. . . . I don't want to take risks."
She wonders when, or if, her family will return to Dora. Their old
neighbors, all Sunnis, had phoned her parents, urging them to return. But
they also told them that they were scared to ask the Sunni family to vacate
their house.
"People are saying Dora is better, but we're still afraid to go," Zubaidi
said. "We don't know that family's background."
Her mother, who once ran a preschool in Dora, is worried over one of their
former neighbors there. He encouraged them to leave their house because they
were Shiites. And now he says he has a friend who wants to rent her
preschool, now shuttered. He insists the area is too dangerous for the
family to return.
"He is always terrifying us. He told us there's always a storm after the
calm," said Um Melal, which means mother of Melal, who said she feared
having her name published. "We are suspicious. We can't go back, although
other Sunnis are telling us to come back, and saying, 'We'll protect you.' "
She said the improved security was not the only reason for returning to
Iraq. She wanted to pick up her pension payments as well as winter clothes
the family had stored away. Their Syrian residency permit has not expired.
"The situation is much better, but it still feels soft, unsteady," Um Melal
said. "Until now, we have not made a final decision to go back or stay.
We're waiting to see what happens.
"I expect Baghdad will come back sooner or later," she continued. "But that
needs time. If you want to build a wall, it takes you 10 days. But if you
want to demolish the wall, it takes you 10 minutes."
Hashimi is worried that the wall could easily crumble. He recently applied
to join the Iraqi police. But he doesn't trust the Shiite-led government to
integrate Sunnis into the political system, the police and army. And what if
the American troops leave?
"Of course, if the political process is still the same, and the Americans
withdraw from Dora, in a couple of days everything will collapse again."
denials is their hatred of Bush and the political gamble they have invested
in aligning themselves with the head-lopping terrorists.
Which is why I no longer hold back labeling them the traitors they
continually prove themselves to be!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/22/AR2007112201568_pf.html
BAGHDAD, Nov. 22 -- Iraqis are returning to their homeland by the hundreds
each day, by bus, car and plane, encouraged by weeks of decreased violence
and increased security, or compelled by visa and residency restrictions in
neighboring countries and the depletion of their savings.
Those returning make up only a tiny fraction of the 2.2 million Iraqis who
have fled Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. But they represent the
largest number of returnees since February 2006, when sectarian violence
began to rise dramatically, speeding the exodus from Iraq.
Many find a Baghdad they no longer recognize, a city altered by blast walls
and sectarian rifts. Under the improved security, Iraqis are gingerly
testing how far their new liberties allow them to go. But they are also
facing many barriers, geographical and psychological, hardened by violence
and mistrust.
Days after she returned from Syria, 23-year-old Melal al-Zubaidi and a
friend went to the market on a pleasant night to eat ice cream. It was a
short walk, yet unthinkable only a month ago for a woman in the capital.
Still, her parents were nervous, and Zubaidi wore a head scarf and an
ankle-length skirt to avoid angering Islamic extremists.
The Zubaidis, a Shiite Muslim family, have yet to pass another boundary.
When they fled Iraq five months ago, a Sunni family took over their large
house in Dora, a sprawling neighborhood in southern Baghdad. When the
Zubaidis returned this month, they were too scared to ask the new occupants
to leave. So they rented a small apartment in Mashtal, a mostly Shiite
district.
"Security is better," said Melal al-Zubaidi, who has a degree in
engineering. "But we still have fear inside ourselves."
Over the past two months, the level of nearly every type of violence -- car
bombings, assassinations, suicide attacks -- has dropped from earlier this
year. The downturn is a result of a confluence of factors: This year, 30,000
U.S. military reinforcements were funneled into Baghdad and other areas.
Sunni tribes and insurgents turned against the al-Qaeda in Iraq insurgent
group and partnered with U.S. forces to patrol neighborhoods and towns.
Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, seeking to improve his movement's image,
ordered his Mahdi Army militia to freeze operations.
U.N. refugee officials estimate that 45,000 Iraqis returned from Syria last
month, while Iraqi officials say 1,000 are arriving each day.
The returnees find a capital that offers greater freedom of movement. Shops
are open later in many neighborhoods, and curfews have been reduced.
But those freedoms still come with constraints. Weddings, accompanied by
honking cars and lively bands, are reappearing on the streets, but they
still end before darkness falls. Visits to relatives and friends across
Baghdad are more possible but still hinge on which group or sect controls
each neighborhood. Some stores are selling alcohol, but fundamentalists
watch for those who breach their codes.
Luay Hashimi, 31, returned to his house in Dora with his wife and three
young children last month after fleeing to Syria nine months ago. Since
then, 11 other relatives who also had left for Syria -- Sunnis like him --
have come back, too.
Hashimi no longer sees bodies in the street when he opens his front door.
Sunni extremists no longer man checkpoints to search his vehicle for alcohol
or signs of collaboration with the government or the Americans. Roads are
being paved, and municipal workers are sprucing up parks and traffic
circles. His patch of Dora is now a fortress, surrounded by tall blast walls
that separate entire blocks.
"It's totally secured," said Hashimi, who was an intelligence officer during
the government of Saddam Hussein. But a few days ago, he drove across the
main highway to another section of Dora. He felt a familiar fear. "You're
lost there. You don't know who controls the area, Sunni or Shia, American
soldiers or Iraqi security forces. It's still chaotic."
He never drives on side streets, afraid of the unknown. On a recent day, he
wanted to visit a Shiite friend in Amil, a district controlled by the Mahdi
Army, whom he had not seen in a year. But his friend advised him not to
come. Hashimi felt relief. "I'm afraid to go to Shiite areas," he said.
Before Hashimi left Iraq, he used to pick up a friend every day from the
mixed enclave of Bayaa and take him to the security firm where they both
worked. But during his time in Syria, Shiite militias cleansed Bayaa of
Sunnis. "It's impossible for me to go there now," he said.
So he spends most of his days in his once-mixed neighborhood, now a mostly
Sunni area. A nearby tea shop is open until 10 p.m., but all other shops
close by 7 p.m. Under Hussein, they used to be open past midnight. The
walled-off streets have squeezed the pool of customers. Electricity, Hashimi
said, is still scarce.
Kareem Sadi Haadi, a civil engineer, did not want to return to Baghdad. Nor
did most of the Iraqis he knew in Syria. He and his family had escaped there
five months after the U.S. invasion. But he ran out of money after two
failed attempts to smuggle his family to Europe. Two weeks ago, they
returned to Karrada, the mostly Shiite district where the family once lived.
Today, they live in a rented apartment with furniture given to them by
relatives. Haadi said he is shocked by Baghdad's metamorphosis -- the
checkpoints, road closings, traffic jams, razor wire on buildings, and the
blast walls.
"Baghdad feels like a military base," said Haadi, 48, a Sunni. "Safety
without these barriers is real safety."
Although he has been back in the capital for two weeks, he has not yet seen
his sister who lives in the mainly Shiite neighborhood of Alam, controlled
by the Mahdi Army. She warned him that any stranger would be killed.
"Security is when I can get in my car at 10 p.m. and drive to see my
sister," Haadi said.
Four days ago, gunmen kidnapped a man outside the house of Haadi's in-laws,
also in Karrada.
"We don't go outside Karrada," said his wife, Anwar Mahdi, 43. "Now I am
afraid to go to my parents."
As soon as they can save enough money, Haadi said, they hope to go back to
Damascus. That could prove difficult. Syria now allows only Iraqis with
special visas to enter.
Melal al-Zubaidi is optimistic. When she fled to Syria, she was terrified to
drive through Anbar province, where Sunni militants were pulling Shiites
from buses and killing them. This time, the bus drove throughout the night.
"That comforted me," Zubaidi said. "I expect that security will improve day
by day. People are tired of conflict."
Still, she has lines that she is not yet willing to cross. She has not
visited her old university, fearing car bombs or kidnappings. In a nation
where neighbors are often as close as relatives, Zubaidi is wary of trusting
people in her community. "We're still afraid to meet new people," she said.
"This district is still strange for me. . . . I don't want to take risks."
She wonders when, or if, her family will return to Dora. Their old
neighbors, all Sunnis, had phoned her parents, urging them to return. But
they also told them that they were scared to ask the Sunni family to vacate
their house.
"People are saying Dora is better, but we're still afraid to go," Zubaidi
said. "We don't know that family's background."
Her mother, who once ran a preschool in Dora, is worried over one of their
former neighbors there. He encouraged them to leave their house because they
were Shiites. And now he says he has a friend who wants to rent her
preschool, now shuttered. He insists the area is too dangerous for the
family to return.
"He is always terrifying us. He told us there's always a storm after the
calm," said Um Melal, which means mother of Melal, who said she feared
having her name published. "We are suspicious. We can't go back, although
other Sunnis are telling us to come back, and saying, 'We'll protect you.' "
She said the improved security was not the only reason for returning to
Iraq. She wanted to pick up her pension payments as well as winter clothes
the family had stored away. Their Syrian residency permit has not expired.
"The situation is much better, but it still feels soft, unsteady," Um Melal
said. "Until now, we have not made a final decision to go back or stay.
We're waiting to see what happens.
"I expect Baghdad will come back sooner or later," she continued. "But that
needs time. If you want to build a wall, it takes you 10 days. But if you
want to demolish the wall, it takes you 10 minutes."
Hashimi is worried that the wall could easily crumble. He recently applied
to join the Iraqi police. But he doesn't trust the Shiite-led government to
integrate Sunnis into the political system, the police and army. And what if
the American troops leave?
"Of course, if the political process is still the same, and the Americans
withdraw from Dora, in a couple of days everything will collapse again."
8I1j.22967$lD6.11645@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net...
