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CounterPunch
March 21,
2003
Bombing
Away the Chance for Joy
Underneath
the Calm There is Fear
By RAMZI KYSIA
BAGHDAD, IRAQ.
Wednesday, the day it started, I went around to
some of the high schools that we've been working with to do letter
exchanges and diaries. Schools were in session. About half the
students weren't there. Some were staying at home with their
folks but a lot of families did leave Baghdad if they could.
I talked to the teachers, talked to some
students. Everybody seemed to be in pretty good spirits. One
of the English teachers did break down in front of me afterwards.
She was really, really scared. She was scared about the U.S.
possibly using chemical weapons here, she was scared about this
new bomb she heard of --you know, 'the mother of all bombs'.
She really just wanted to vent with somebody. So I listened to
what she had to say, tried to comfort her as much as I could.
The kids talked about how hard it had
been the day before on Tuesday. That was the last official day
of school even though some kids came in on Wednesday. On Tuesday
everybody said good-bye to one another. They said it was a really
emotional experience. They didn't know whether they were going
to see their friends again or how long it might be. Wednesday
had a very strange feel to it. Sort of like a holiday. Not that
people were joyous, but everything was very slow, very easy.
Not too much traffic. It was slightly overcast. It was as if
you know, you're living somewhere in the United States and the
weather reports are saying there's about to be a hurricane and
people are just going about their business preparing for the
hurricane. No panic. But you saw people taping up their windows,
getting supplies, just trying to get ready for what was about
to happen.
Thank God we haven't had saturation bombing
here in Baghdad for the last couple days. The life here has been
very normal. People are out on the street. The markets were open.
I think though that its not going to stay like this. We hear
there are several American armored divisions approaching Baghdad,
the B--52s in Britain are being fueled up and are ready to go
for saturation bombing, maybe tonight. And you know, there is
an air of bravado among people here. They tell you that the United
States has bombing them for the last 12 years and they're still
here. But I think underneath that everybody is very scared. I
know I'm very scared.
Personally, I thought that the United
States wasn't going to begin bombing last night until after midnight,
wait until people had settled in, in order to minimize civilian
casualties. That was the time frame that I was going on. And
I went upstairs to my room to take a shower and I heard the air
raid sirens. And then the sirens cut off after a minute. I brushed
my teeth and waited a little bit --nothing happened for about
10 minutes so I figured that it was a false alarm. Then I got
into the shower. I was all lathered up and then BOOM BOOM BOOM
BOOM! they started bombing. I very quickly rinsed, put on my
clothes and went downstairs. Everybody had gathered in the tea
room here at the Al Fanar, and I think I was the most nervous
of everybody here. The team seemed fine. They were playing chess,
people were drinking tea, journaling. The Iraqis here were all
talking and laughing. They hit a couple buildings across the
river. We've heard conflicting reports. Two buildings behind
the Ministry of Planning, some people have said it was the old
National Assembly, others said it was the building that housed
Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz's office.
There's a little bit more military out
on the street than you usually see here, but there is in no way
an overwhelming presence. In fact when I was in Lebanon, 3 or
4 years ago, I saw much, much more military on the streets there.
Its really kind of eerie. To look at Baghdad it does not seem
to be a nation that is at war. But I do know that things are
much worse in other parts of the country.
Were talking about the possibility of
doing several things if there is a real heavy bombing. One is
to do war crimes monitoring. Curtis Doebbler, who is an international
lawyer has been in touch with us and he has a sheet that he prepared
for the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] in Bosnia
to do monitoring of violations of humanitarian law. So were going
to see if were going to be able to go to hospital emergency rooms
and to bombing sites to interview people in order to provide
that information to groups that are going to be looking at what
the United States does here. We've also been talking to relief
agencies and if its at all possible were going to try and volunteer
with them to provide direct assistance to people. And of course
to do journaling and writing and to be a presence in the city
to visit with the people that we've come to love --to be a voice
in the wilderness for them.
The group mourns what is happening to
Iraq and what has been happening the last 13 years. Its really
horrendous. Hundreds of thousands of people in this country have
been killed because of greed and short-sightedness on the part
of politicians on all sides. Millions of people now are risk.
And who knows what's going to happen in this war. If they do
saturation bombing here thousands of people are going to die.
I don't know how many have died already in the campaign. And
I think the long-term consequences really could be horrendous.
So we mourn. We really do mourn for what's
happening to this country. I think at the same time though, were
trying to not let George Bush or Tony Blair or Saddam Hussein
depress us. You hear the phrase: life is a joy. It should be
a joy. The reason that we work so hard here in Iraq is because
that choice for life to be a joy has been taken away from so
many people. Violently taken away from them. And I don't think
we can let that happen to us.
Ramzi Kysia
is an Arab-American activist and writer currently living in Baghdad.
He works with the Voices in the
Wilderness Iraq Peace Team http://www.iraqpeaceteam.org,
a group of American and international peaceworkers pledging to
remain in Iraq throughout a conflict, in order to be a voice
for the Iraqi people in the U.S.
Yesterday's
Features
Ben Tripp
Blood
for Oil: the Exchange Rate
Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco
Vanessa Jones
Paint
Them Red
Brian J. Foley
Patriotic
Protest for Professors
Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?
Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons
Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror
Milan Rai
Blitz-Coup
Pepe Escobar
A Cheap Family Farce
Floyd Rudmin
The Nightmare at the Back Door: Nuclear Plant's as Terror Targets
Chris Floyd
See Rome (poem)
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
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