What just happened in Iraq yesterday?

by Wamith Al-Kassab (Iraq)

What just happened in Iraq yesterday? I really cannot understand it, the man on the BBC says a twin blast in Baghdad had destroyed 2 Iraqi state ministries and killed about 155 people with 500 wounded. As I watch Iraqi channels on the Internet (none of them the official Iraqi TV cause I want to know the truth, not the government version of truth) I saw people standing in a hospital lobby and laying on its beds, fighting death and bleeding all over their bodies. CNN says OBAMA condemns the attacks. Other channels say they hope it will not effect the Americans’ plans to leave Iraq, because God almighty knows, we need some good old American soldiers to kick Talaban asses in Afghanistan or was it Pakistan? I really do not know, or care…

What just happened in my country? Why, during the past 2 months, did we lose 500 Iraqis in 2 major blasts? That not only attacked and killed people, but attacked and destroyed ministries in the middle of Baghdad, in the green zone area, few steps away from the Iraqi government, the American army, the Iraqi army, and UN offices.

What really happened? Cause my Iraqi friends gave me strange remarks to this question.. one friend who had benefited from the great changes the American brought back to Iraq (money, trips outside Iraq to represent Iraqi people in conferences and power …etc), said it’s just another bloody day and Iraqi people are used to violence and this attack will not stop them from living … other friend (a human rights activist) said it was a sad day ..another one (an Iraqi youth who dreams the Iraqi government will bring peace to Iraq so investors can come and he can get a job) told me he cried in front of the TV, another one just nodded and changed the subject to tell me the updates of Iraqi participants Warda and Gaith in the GULF superstate contents.

What just happened? Because I watch the news every day, and I saw Hillary Clinton give a speech on Iraq-American conference in Washington and she was promising Iraqi displaced families that there will be efforts to return them to Iraq as security improves, Almalky said in his speech in the same conference that security in Iraq has improved and today Iraqi people can go outside at night and drive safely to visit the holy shrines in Najaf. Iraqi leaders measure security by the times when people get killed visiting holy shrines and days when people can go safely, which brings us to a bigger question, is security in Iraq related to Shiaa visits to shrines or it is a whole state security?

Yes, the Iraq I left after working for 7 years in medical camps for refugees, was a safe place. I mean it was not totally safe, because there is a few nasty bad boys who usually beat the hell out of journalists in the middle of the streets, and threaten to kill you cause you post some blogs on human rights every now and then, and yes, if I return today my chances is zero to go out of Baghdad airport alive, but come on. I am only 1 person and these are small terrorist attacks that should not effect the magnificent large picture of security change in Iraq. We had over 600,000 Iraqi soldiers most of them trained in Jordan, Kurdistan, few went to USA, all of them were trained by Americans. We had security companies (they work to protect the VIP only but any way we had ones), we bought armed cars, we bought weapons, we had police forces, the support forces from Sunni (waking councils), we had beshmerka (Kurdish army which sometimes goverment say they are militia, other time they are official army),we had small armies for each party in Iraq… we had many people who carry guns and I do not know why, just I know you do not wanna mess with them.

So we had a lot of people who formed check points with metal and weapons and explosive detectors devices, we had concrete walls all over Baghdad and we had traffic jam because of the check points has to check each car to prevent terrorist from attacking the innocent.

So how could 2 bombed cars pass all these check points and deliver the attacks? The government says it was planned by terrorists from Saddam’s Ba’ath party who got support from Syria, Americans say Iran also support militia in Iraq and send explosives to them, also some people say that these attacks are bigger than terrorist ablities and this is an intelligence agencies work that aim to make the Iraqi Minster of internal affairs look bad on public eyes especially after he had run for office of prime Minster for the coming elections. Others say it was planned to create a political vacancy so the state will fail to run the elections in there time at the end of the year, they link it to the Iraqi parliament failure to pass election law for the past month as a conflict rise between Arabs and Kurds and turkmen on kirkuk. Kurds want election to take place in kirkuk, while Arab and Turkmen say they want quota for their share in the city council as they accuse the Kurds of manipulating the election register and adding 500000 Kurdish citizens to the city population.

Kurds say we are the rightful owners of the city, Arabs say no way, Turkey will invade Iraq if Kurds got ahold of the city. America does not want to upset Turkey, also many Kurds are America’s friends, Iran and Saudi Arabia had their saying also, the milky say kirkuk is Iraqi but we respect the Kurds, Shia leaders will give kirkuk to Kurds in exchange of a Federal shia stat at south …etc (if you can figure kirkuk issue then be my guest I had not figure it yet)

So al-qada (which America defeated in Iraq), terrorist ( which al-malky has defeated), corruption (also defeated by malky), Saddam Ba’ath leaders (escaped Abo Ghraib and boka presontment by Americans and live in Syria), militias (defeated by Americans), Iraqi political leaders (undfeated by obesity, heavy bank accounts and traveling the world in 7 days every week), Iran (undefeated by democracy or human rights), Syria (undefeated also by facing the same fate as Iraqi regime for the past few years), those are our list of the unsual suspects of the deadly attacks in Iraq.

So, what will happen now? If whatever happened in Baghdad yesterday or happened during the past years, happened in Europe or and eastern country then we will see armies, shock over the world, and youtub attack video will sky rock the roof, but in Iraq and Middle East this is a matter of every day events. I mean anyone can say to me: instead of focusing on the dark side, look to the advances in Iraq and the progress, we have democracy and we elected a government (yes they all turn to be thieves as Iraq #3 in corruption over the world, but this is bad judgement from our side.. we do not know who to elect!), we had human rights (in spite few reports of police and army forgetting to apply it and torture some innocent suspect then let them go after they pay few hundred dollars), we had oil (which all the world ready to invest and we will get profit from it in the future as soon as we stop spending all it income on security, unemployment, conferences for national dialogue and reconciliation, and how we fight corruption).

We had great changes in Iraq, we get ride of bad evil, dictatorship, who killed Iraqi people (many say he killed only Shia and Kurds, any other ethnicities victims had missed to make any victims list), we also are allies with big countries to fight terror (which had stick as only after we became allies with these countries).

They will say I am a Ba’aths member, old lover of bad ugly Sadam, I do not respect human rights, want women to wear veals and a tent if possible, will shoot gay people in streets and drink their blood if possible, a radical, Arabist fanatic, crazy, drunk, stupid and ignorant who knows nothing about life or history, or ever look to death into the eyes as he pass with his dark coat taking my friends lives.

But I am an activist, who stood and waved to the Americans when they entered Iraq. I believe the need to go home if their job finished. I had suffered under Saddam days and lost family to his brutality. I work in relief, medical services, teach people conflict resolution and encourage them to go to the elections. I am not anti-American or anti-Semitic or anti-east or anti-anything, except anti-corruption. I believe in peace, harmony and freedom, and I paid my price from losing everything for my beliefs.

My only problem is that I cannot see my people on TV covered with blood anymore. I want answers, and I want actions. I want to see the real criminals punished and I do not want what happen yesterday, or on the black Wednesday before it or the many death stories before it repeated.

I just what to stop all this.

Today.