Hat tip to reader sidereal for this link to a blog you may not know, where up-close and personal accounts (and photos) of what’s happening in Iraq are being posted by a self-proclaimed “Republican” working for an international NGO.
Among the recent posts:
I Reluctantly Join the Ranks of the Pessimists
The last email I received last night was one of my staff telling me he could no longer work for an American organization (see below). The first phone call I received this morning was my good friend, Munqith Daghir, the top Iraqi pollster, telling me he has to cancel a meeting because of the security situation. He said that 25 of his relatives were killed in Fallujah overnight when a helicopter bombed their house.
I’m very afraid that the flood of images of Coalition killing Iraqis and the perceived neglect of Iraq’s reconstruction, is going to combine to create a fundamental shift in public opinion, and convert the average Iraqi into an extremist – either political or religious.
Here is the email:
When I came first to your … & talked to you, I liked your ideas about Democracy … especially when you tell me about how the new Iraq will be … & there is no place for Dectatorism again … & you are working hard & risking by your life to make changes.
But after the News today … I saw your Democracy … does Democracy means killing more than 100 citizens & injured over 200 just in Falluja? & more in Baghdad , Ramadi? does the democracy means strafing a Mosque with a 227 Kg bomb (as Kemet said)??? Did you heard that 5 civilians bleed till death in Ramadi coz US soldiers prevent them from going to Hospitals? all of this is just a brief from the whole news within these three days!
can you tell me the difference between your soldiers & Al-Qaida? both killing civilians … both are terrorists!
SO … I can’t work with your organization anymore … coz I don’t like such democracy … & I can’t work with those killing my people!It isn’t important that you can easily rebut these arguments. They key point is that this is the reaction that is being generated… and nobody is effectively rebutting them in the bigger picture.
This is disheartening.
It sounds like this blogger could use your support/encouragement. Email here babelonandon2003@yahoo.com
From one of his Iraqi employees:
“There are two main points in enforcing security in Sadr City and among the Shi’ia:
– Forming a new Iraqi police force because the current police force is totally corrupted, all the ones now are the same ones from the former regime. Some of the people that would have been good people, new people, were told to go to the police academy on January 15, but when they got there, they were told that their names had been lost. All 100 people were told this. ”
Ugh. Unbelievable. This is the absolutely essential groundwork. Should be one of the highest priorities. Where are those billions of dollars going?
Sidereal, I wish I could say. Every time I read some type of economic analysis, from this guy that Ed links to (hard to believe he’s been around for nearly a year before he’s found by OW) to collounsbury (especially col), I just cannot figure out what’s going on. This uprising would not be happening IMHO, if the young men had jobs. Heck ANY job. Is it so difficult to give a CPA officer a stash of cash and find a group of young men willing to take some of it to rebuild a school or sewers or whatever?
Is there some cultural thing with going on here? I mean WTF? How long does it take to “master plan” this stuff and then get on with it? Does the CPA just not have a clue economically?
I expect this may have, as we heard this morning, with a desire to avoid “quick fixes”. They give 10 million to some guy to build a widget factory, providing permanent jobs. But it takes two years to get that factory built, and the coalition must be reinforced by using Spanish or Korean workers.
Or something. Trying to give some possible positive spin here, but it doesn’t look good to me either.
Well, I can see how that would make some sense Bob, but it sounds like Webvan-thinking* to me. I’m surprised because there have been articles in papers about normal folks, collecting a buncha cash and then hiring Iraqis to complete basic projects. You’d think the CPA would learn from this.
I just can’t believe its that tough.
*You’ll recall that Webvan had a pretty good idea, but overbuilt its distribution centers to prepare for growth in the future at great expense. Eventually, they ran out of $$$ because they didn’t diversify into non-grocery deliver fast enough.
hard to believe he’s been around for nearly a year before he’s found by OW
Hey, we’ve all got day jobs…we fit this in where we should take coffee breaks…(OK, so I take long coffee breaks).
OW has only been around since November 2003
Did you all see the KBR/Halliburton story over there? I’ve linked to it here. Corporate crap.
All props should be directed to Opus. I found babelon via Dpt o’ Louise. And yes, that story of KBR maneuvering to not have to pay benefits to slain Iraqi employees is deplorable.
Oh Edward, I’m sorry. I meant no disparagement towards OW. I guess I was just surprised that I had never heard of them as I like to tool around the blogiverse fairly often and never caught it.
IMHO OW is filling a wonderful spot and is my second stop after Tacitus (and truth be told, is my most often visited site since Tac went to Scoop).
And as I blog this, all the mosques, Sunni and Shi’a alike, are calling for Jihad… – Riverbend via Mark Kleiman.
It’s hard for me to see this specific problem (the lack of will and funding to ensure that the reconstruction of Iraq provided jobs for Iraqis) as anything but an obvious result of two Bush & Co factors:
1. Don’t bother to plan for the occupation of Iraq, because everything will work perfectly
2. Reconstruction contracts must, before everything else, be highly profitable to Halliburton/////////// to the US corporations to which they have been awarded
No one now disagrees with the first issue – Bush & Co never had a Plan B because Plan A was “We’ll walk right in and take over and it will all go fine.”
But given that providing work for Iraqis is such obvious common sense – employ Iraqi companies amd Iraqis wherever possible, and make it possible – I think it all too possible that the ideal of making a profit (“the reconstruction of Iraq will pay for itself” said Wolfowitz) was allowed to override all other issues. The belief that this disastrous war could be, should be, profitable, is one of the root sources of its failure.
I should have used an emoticon, Crionna…I took not offense, nor would Moe, Von, Katherine or Sebastian, I imagine…just my lame attempt at humor
thanks for the kind words about OW!