From Baghdad

[barb162]

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0930-15.htm

Published on Thursday, September 30, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
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.

Farnaz Fassihi, a Wall Street Journal reporter sent this report as an e-mail
to friends.

[barb162]

1. the story is much longer...read the whole thing!