Oh my God, SIX years!

by Wamith Al-Kassab (Iraq)

By wamith kassab, more by the auther on Iraqi Streets.

Yes , I as your read in the title I am shouting 6 years has passed since the US troops inter under the name of collation forces in to Baghdad , this time 6 years ago we were attach to the radios after the Americans destroyed the electricity stations in Baghdad ,we were listening to the news about how the Iraqi army was fighting the American marines in Baghdad airport ,I still remember the Iraqi government Spoks man Said Al-safah shouting in a press conference that we had we had forced the American to withdraw , but things happen so fast ,and few days ago their was no Iraqi government ,or army or police and the Americans where all over Baghdad ,and if you look from the window you will see at the dusk the sun going to sleep making the sky with a pink color while a long tours of smoke are rising from burning Iraqi governmental buildings ,banks door were open ,please just enter and take all the Iraqi fortunes ,thefts rooming Iraqi streets burning stealing while American solders watch from a distance

6 years , Wahoo ,how many Iraq people died ? I do not know ,reports say just 600-800 thousands , and what I saw ,well 1-2 millions , but I men how knows ? Iraq ,well they say we had new Iraq ,even they think security has improved ,and according to BBC latest poll we as Iraqi people are worried on future only ,we are living good just worried what job or economic chances we had , I mean this is the BBC ,they know every thing ,so this should be right ,does not it ?

Well I will talk about my self ,my worries ,my future ,my loses , I know that financially I had no improvements ,in Saddam days I could not offered to buy new cloths or marry or have a car ,know well I got paid 10 times but still not able to find money to life like normal humans in the world ,cause all my income is divided between rent,buying gas for my home electricity generator,buy fuel from black market for cooking and heating ,buying clean water ,food ,paying expensive bill for very slow Internet ,paying the highest minute prices for mobile company that is always had no network ( once I stood in front of the company building and still no network their logo is we are with you wherever you …well they sure do not )
What else , I have complain to the transportation ministry in 2006 to come and connect my house phone line ( in Iraq phone lines are buried under the ground ) which was cut when the ministry of water came to fix the water pipes ,today in 2009 the phone people had not came yet or we had water.

I have tried to find good job ,real good job ,that will make you live the American dream ,Opss sorry means the Iraqi dream , but nothing , you had only government or privet sector to work with ,and privet sector doesn’t have any work ,so they close their business and look for governmental jobs , and governmental jobs are like prison ,you had to be their in 8 morning and leave at 4 in the afternoon ,and if you lie ,steal ,good in making conspiracies , forging buying receipts ,you had a good governmental future ,they may send you for training out side Iraq ,but in case you are a good boy ,well you may have to lay law and keep your mouth shut

What else ,we had like a million party in Iraq ,no but I mean even the man how seal groceries can open a party , which is good ,but I mean non of them in the past 6 years had tell us what is their economical or health or education or labor or pensions plans ? but they all say they are for unity ,reconciliation ,non-sectarian polices ,security ,human rights , freedom ,democracy ,reconstruction, and of course anti-corruption ? so my question if they all had the same goals ,same strategy ,same logos ,why so many ? can not they unit together ? and why when they reach positions in the parliament or the city councils they spend all the time blaming each others on all the bad things in Iraq ? why they only are able to agree on their pensions plans and their salaries laws but spend months arguing Iraqi people pensions ,salaries and social security ( which I do not think we had ), and my final big question ,why in God name we had all those people fighting against corruption ,but amnesty international had us in the tope of most corrupted countries in the world for ,how many years ,3 or 4 ?

Well , I do not know ,since 2003 I lost 4 friends , all of them where 24-25 years old when they die .killed yes all of them killed ,I lost my auntie also she was 45 and she die fro cancer ,they had no fast technology to detect cancer in Iraq ,especially breast or ovarian cancer , so the Iraqi health system took her in very long painful trip between hospital to hospital searching for good doctors ( all had escaped Iraq) or searching for medicine ,she had to travel from Kirkuk to mousl to have her radiation shoots cause we had no center in the area ,imagine you had to travel 5 hours to get chemotherapy and return to your house in the same day with all the radiation beaming from you because they had no beds in the hospital , this is in 2008 ,in 1997 when Iraq was under siege of food or medicine ,Iraqi hospitals cure lung carcinoma ( cancer of the lung) , but this is life

Any way more stuff , I have been invited to many Iraqi conferences ,meet sweet Iraqi people interested in building the country , doing good job really , they are called Iraqi civil society ,of course not all of them nice people ,some are really sectarian ,others are working as cover to the government ,others are not very transparent or honest ,but in the middle of all this there is serious people doing marvelous work ,they were the ones who filled the empty space of government in humanitarian aid during 2003 till today , but few days ago I read the Iraqi government is writing this new law to them ,which will make the government like give them the ok to receive founds from organizations ,and allots of new regulations that make it really hard for them to work ,they will be like a governmental civil society just without pension plan like the nice people in the parliament

But it is not all black ,last week Baghdad university celebrate the graduation of the 2009 class ,people who enter collage after 2003 ,today graduate, they have to find jobs to eat ,but Iraq had only oil as source of income ,and since the world economic crises we hear Iraqi officials telling us ( DO NOT PANIC WE WILL PAY YOUR SALARIES THIS YEAR ) and I was like ,ok ,was it spouse some way you will not pay ? and why should I panic ? is there is something wrong ? yes ,it seems our financial people had some problems in making a budget for Iraq and our leaders had some arm twisting to each others in the parliament to let it pass this easy , so when you read in the news paper an interview with Iraqi Minster of interior and he explain how we had defeated the insurgents and al-qada ,you will not enjoy happiness long as he explain that he had to let 26ooo security man go cause he had money !!! well my question hear ,what the 26000 man will do ? this is a small army for GOD name ,they will find job at KFC chain or something ? Opss again forget ,we had no KFC or BIG Mac or all the commercial brands of any thing in Iraq ,cause the international world is still not sure of Iraq security ,so return to the 26000 man ,they will go home or make a small army or a militia or what ?
6 years ,had past ,I heard Iraqi government is planning to close the Iraqi displaced people file ,GREAT, did they go home ? not really only 40% or something ,and the rest 60% ?well they had to understand that the tents ,tin houses they are living in today are their houses , good for the 2 million Iraqi just displaced inside Iraq ,but I know there is about 4 millions enjoying the hospitality of the rest of the world outside Iraq ,well some are returning just because they did not get asylum ,but all the people I know had not ,in fact you hear more Iraqi people are trying to escape Iraq ,
I know that from my graduation class of 2001 we had 4 deaths ,15 been kidnapped and disappeared after paying heavy ransoms ,and 22 escaped Iraq , 16 left Baghdad to Kurdistan ,33 left to najaf and karbla , the rest I do not know but I had only seen 5 of my class in Baghdad in the last 3 years and I go to all the events in our graduates union or in the university ,and non of the people who had left Baghdad plan to return in the next 10 years ,

So ,did the Iraqi liberation operation brought us peace ? no , did it freedom ? yes ,but can I speak this freely if I was like facing audience in a conference or in street or in my religious place ? we are free to express on the Internet , but even this is becoming dangerous ,as Iraq taken number 1 in journalist killed and bloggers disappeared in the world

Did they brought us democracy ? well yes but semi-democracy ,because the people who won in the election had to face the aliens of the powerfully losers in the last election ,and also democracy give us all the right to nominate our self in election ,but if I entered with 10000 dollars budget for a campaign and some Minster or governor or Mayer enter using police forces to distribute his posters with an open budget of millions of dollars ,who will win ( and in fact I had only 100 droller I was counting for your donations for the rest 9900 dollars for my campaign ) , I mean I saw one candidate distributing laptops to people to elect him ,good if john McCain distributed laptops he will be now sitting in the white house!!

6 years , in which we saw our country destroyed ,torn apart ,destroyed and we are divided into groups minorities and whatever God knows else !! we had only the power to pray for better tomorrow ,the patient to wait for someone to have the courtesy of standing for our rights to live like humans ,and the Internet for free expression

6 years had passed on the American entering Baghdad , the were expecting flours and greetings we were expecting human rights and better life ,they got bolts and bombs and we got this long space of time waiting for this nightmare to end which we call our Iraqi life