Letters from Baghdad

author : Joe Carr topic : Iraq occupation

[Joe Carr is a former Olympia resident. In 2003 he worked with the International Solidarity Movement in the Palestinian city of Rafah, where he witnessed the Israeli military killings of Olympia activist Rachel Corrie and British activist Tom Hurndall. He subsequently volunteered with the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) in the southern West Bank. In early May, he joined CPT in Baghdad, as one of the few internationals based outside the US-fortified Green Zone. The following is an edited excerpt of his ongoing journal, which can be read in its entirety at http://www.loveinrevolution.org .]

7 May 2005

Our neighborhood is incredibly diverse, a wonderful mixture of Shiite, Sunni, Kurds, and Christians; pretty much every major Iraqi ethnicity is represented. We live right on the Tiberius River, so outside our door is a gorgeous park. Right across the river is the infamous Green Zone, which stretches five miles in all directions. We regularly see and hear explosions from mortars, car bomb attacks, and the US military's destruction of unexploded munitions.

CPT Iraq has historically behaved according to a variety of security levels. We decided to fully withdraw twice after Iraqi neighbors and partners said we put them in more danger, but we returned when the threat lessoned and Iraqis invited us back. In the past we have been able to walk around everywhere and take random taxis, but right now we're only going out when absolutely necessary, always in pairs, and only with trusted drivers. We have a wardrobe of traditional Iraqi clothing with which we try to disguise ourselves, but it's hard for Tom, who's a 6′3″ broad shouldered bald white guy. He goes around in a grey beret and a black and white kaffiya; our Iraqi friends say, "there's no way we can make you look Iraqi, so we're going for Russian Palestinian".

Though the violence can be totally random, we should be fine as long as we keep our faces off TV and avoid the Green Zone, checkpoints, and military & police convoys. I promise that we're being careful and will withdraw if a specific threat against us arises or if our presence begins significantly endangering the Iraqis around us. I once again thank you for all your thoughts and prayers for me, the team, and the Iraqi people.

8 May 2004

[...] After dinner, one of our young translators stopped by. "What's up, man," he said in the most natural English slang I've heard from an Iraqi. I was convinced he'd lived in the states, but to my surprise he's spent his whole life in Iraq. He's a Palestinian Iraqi who learned English in school and took in plenty of American movies and music as a kid. When the US invaded Baghdad, they swept through his neighborhood while he was hanging out with his friends. One of the soldiers heard him speaking English and hooked him up with a job as personal translator for a Lieutenant. After awhile, they said they needed to do a security check on him or he'd be fired. Because he's a Palestinian refugee, he has no citizenship or paperwork, so the US military kicked him out. A few weeks later, US soldiers repaid his service to them by arresting him as a security threat. They imprisoned him in Camp Bucca for 11 months and released him only recently. He said the soldiers took a liking to him, and by hanging out with them he picked up his nearly perfect colloquial American English. I'm continually impressed with his use of words like "friggin," "yo," and "dope".

He's been through a lot for a 23-year-old. When he took me out to help me buy some Iraqi-style clothes, I told him I was a little frightened to be out on the street. He asked me if I'd ever been shot at, and I told him I had. He told me a story of when fighting broke out in his neighborhood and he had to hide in alleyways. People were shot and killed on both sides of him; it was one of several times that he had narrowly escaped death, al-hamdulillah ("thank God"). I suddenly felt a little silly for being frightened. He walked me back home quickly and without incident, as we chatted about partying and girls, and I felt totally at home.

10 May 2005

My First Car Bomb

At about 9:45am, we heard a loud explosion that shook our windows and echoed through our halls. We immediately looked at the clock to see if it was on the hour, as that is when US troops destroy unexploded ordinances. Since it wasn't, we immediately knew it must be a car bomb. Shelia had gone out 20 minutes before to run an errand, and she immediately called to let us know that she was inside and okay. Emergency vehicles rushed passed our apartment as we headed to the roof to look for smoke. A huge black cloud billowed from among the buildings 3/4 mile north of us.

Our landlord's wife was on the roof doing laundry. Before she ran down to call and see if her husband was ok, she told us that it looked like Firas Square, one of the major intersections at a bridge going across the Tigris into the Green Zone. We were planning to go through that intersection and over that bridge to the Green Zone today to meet with a UN human rights worker, and we worried we wouldn't be able to.

We decided to try the visit anyway, so we met our driver down the street and set off. We began talking about the explosion and noted that it wasn't in the Green Zone, "No," our driver said, "the black zone", and we laughed. We quickly learned that we wouldn't be able to take the normal roads to the bridge. Iraqi police blocked intersections with random items; metal pipes, tree trunks, random bits of razor wire, anything that would deter traffic away from the bomb site.

Turns out the car bomb wasn't at Firas Square but on Sadone street, they'd targeted a military convoy. We heard that seven were confirmed dead (the number always rises with time), all civilian bystanders, no military personnel. They say over 40 were injured, and the bomb entirely missed the convoy and only hit civilians. There was another bomb today we didn't hear, apparently a suicide bomber rammed his car into an Iraqi police station and injured six cops. There are always more attacks when the Iraqi National Assembly is meeting.

[ . . . ] Military convoys make their passing quite the event. They usually include multiple hummers with machine gunners on top, followed by SUVs and then more hummers. Iraqi traffic keeps a huge distance behind; apparently these convoys have shot-up many random Iraqi cars that accidentally drove too close. All the hummers have white signs with Arabic writing on them; we guess that they say something like "Stay back or we'll kill you!", but it's a paragraph of tiny letters that you have to get pretty close in order to read. Irony has become an art in occupied Iraq.

Armored helicopters frequently fly very low overhead. They fly low so that they're only in view for a short time and are harder to shoot down, but then of course they often have accidents and run into things. We had some discussion about how difficult it must be for a pilot to choose whether to risk being shot down or risk running into something. We concluded that it's best for them to not fly at all, and instead to go home and play with their children.

We found that the bridge was closed to traffic, perhaps because the National Assembly was meeting. Get this, every time the Iraqi National Assembly meets, they shut down the major bridge connecting north and south Baghdad. Can you imagine the US shutting down major highways every time Congress is in session? And we wonder why this new government is so unpopular. We began walking across the bridge as Iraqis are forced to, and quickly learned that it isn't closed to all traffic; military, contractors, and Iraqi National Guard (ING) vehicles whiz by, often at dangerously high speeds, despite all the walkers. The bridge is about a half a mile long, and lined with Iraqi women begging for money, men selling cold soda, and children offering to shine shoes.

The Green Zone

This massive fortified compound had been built-up in my mind as a wicked place of death and destruction. I've been terrified to go anywhere near it, like I'd spontaneously explode if we drove by or something. Therefore, I'd been fearing this visit with the UN, but I decided it was worth the risk to see this "Green Zone" and meet some of our key international contacts. Once we got there and inside, I realized that this was another exaggeration in my head. The guards and fortresses become scarily normal.

To get to the UN office, we had to go through 6 checkpoints and deal with five different security forces. We were initially greeted by ING and US contractors, then US contractors and US soldiers, then Georgian soldiers outside the UN compound, and finally UN Forces (called blue birds) who were soldiers from Fiji. I can't imagine being trapped in that place like so many journalists and NGO reps, forbidden to leave by their bosses who are working in offices thousands of miles away.

We met with the guy in charge of the entire UN human rights mission in Iraq. In fact, he's it. He's the only representative from the UN Human Rights Commission, and one of only 100 UN workers in the entire country, which includes the Fijian security forces. The number of UN staff only recently increased to 100 from 35. This is all the workers the UN is allowed to have to staff all their projects for the entire country, including administration, construction, humanitarian aid, governance, constitution-writing, refugees, children, and lastly, human rights; and none may leave the Green Zone.

This man is one of the most passionate and dedicated UN workers I've ever met. He obviously overworks himself, even though Green Zone curfew closes down his office at 9pm. He is frustrated that he's forbidden to leave, even with an armed convoy. He said he longed to live like us, or to even just go for a walk down the streets of Iraq. He's even contemplated using his vacation time to see the country he works so hard for. Besides, how is he supposed to monitor human rights in Iraq if he can't ever meet, visit, or interview Iraqis? The answer is obvious: he isn't. I believe the US has intentionally let the security situation get this bad so that they can occupy Iraq free from international monitoring. This is why our continued presence is so important.

We discussed ways that we could work with him; he said he could give us some contacts and we could provide him with information and interviews from abused detainees and other human rights abuses. One thing he can do is apply pressure from within and keep the US forces and new Iraqi Government on their toes, so we'll keep the reports coming. On the way out, he commented to a co-worker that CPT is his most important ally in monitoring human rights in Iraq. That's pretty flattering.

12 May 2005

Today was a long and slow day. Multiple previously scheduled meetings were cancelled so we were stuck in the flat. There was no electricity at all, so once we ran the computer batteries and the car battery dead I was left with little work to do. Not to mention it was incredibly hot with no fans or AC.

The most interesting thing going on were the passing US military patrols. Three humvees and two battalions of US foot soldiers went street to street doing "house checks". Tom observed a group of them going into the orphanage to play with the children, thankfully leaving their guns outside. Otherwise, most Iraqis stayed inside and prayed they wouldn't be detained, or that the resistance wouldn't attack the patrol while on their street. A group of children trailed behind the convoy, likely fascinated by the American soldiers. The soldiers did nothing to discourage these curious children, even though the soldiers knew that the children would likely be killed or injured if the patrol was attacked. Perhaps the soldiers think the children act as some kind of human shield from the resistance; perhaps they think the active smiling kids somehow validate the soldier's presence; perhaps they just don't care whether the children are there or not. I would have asked them, but if we're seen talking to soldiers, Iraqis may think we're somehow associated with the military.

Tonight is Thursday night, the equivalent of our Friday night since Iraqis get Friday off. I invited my Palestinian-Iraqi homie to come over and party. This is the aforementioned young man with perfect American English who spent a year detained by the US. I'll call him Shaggy, because he reminds me of the beatnik character from Scooby Doo. The team agreed that he could crash at the CPT flat tonight because occupation forces shoot anyone out after the 11pm curfew.

Shaggy and I picked up some beers and hung out on the roof smoking the hookah. It was a nice night with a breeze and bright stars. We had an excellent view of the Tigris River, and right across into the Green Zone. As we smoked and drank, Shaggy got contemplative. He wondered aloud what all the internationals in there were doing and thinking. "Probably missing their families," he thought, "wanting to get out of here and go home". When he was detained in Camp Bucca, he noticed that the US soldiers were as much captives as he was. He wrote a poem called "Going Home," which affected the guards as much as it did the detainees. I'm continually amazed by the humanity of oppressed people. It is an enormous source of inspiration and hope.

Shaggy was quite popular among the soldiers at Camp Bucca. His jovial personality and fabulous American slang went over well, particularly with the black and Latino soldiers, he said. He even claims to have dated three soldiers: one black woman and two Latinas. He said that his popularity with the battalion protected him from the jealousy of other male soldiers.

Shaggy worked as a translator at the camp's medical facility. He'd sometimes be in there alone and would play on the radio. He'd pick it up and call another station and holler, "What the fuck is up over there?"

And they'd say, "Shaggy, what the hell are you doing? You know you aren't supposed to be on the radio!"

"I don't give a shit, tell me what the fuck is up."

"Shaggy, get off the fucking radio! What if someone hears?"

"Everybody knows me, so tell me what the fuck is up, or I'm gonna kick your ass." The soldiers would laugh, and they'd eventually tell him what the fuck was up.

We kept chatting about school and music and girls. When I asked him about his love life, he got quiet and introspective. "I was in love," he said, "but now she is gone". He said he fell in love with an Iraqi Christian girl that he met in school. They'd had a secret relationship and planned to get married, but it wasn't to be. During the first part of the US invasion, her house was hit by a US missile, one of the many that US troops fired into civilian neighborhoods. It killed everyone inside. "My love is dead" he said, and a tear rolled down my cheek.

These stories are always tragic, but it's particularly heartbreaking to hear a young man's saga of lost love. It's even harder for him because he can't talk about it to anyone. The secret relationship would shame both of their families. Credible reports show that the US invasion claimed the lives of over 100,000 Iraqi civilians. Shaggy's tragic story helps me remember that these victims are so much more than numbers.