Is it going to get better in Iraq?

[Nictoe]

Iraqis try not to lose cool amid summer blackouts

By Aseel Kami / Reuters
June 30th, 2006

A cartoon in an Iraqi daily this week showed a young couple sitting at a table sipping drinks. The woman asks: "When are we going to get married?" Her reluctant suitor replies: "When we get better electricity."

The joke may not be new -- the punchline used to be "When the war is over" -- but Iraqis have given it a new twist as they try to stay cool in oppressive summer heat on just a few hours of electricity a day.

With the onset of the hottest months of July and August, the temperature in Baghdad, for example, will soon touch an energy- sapping 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit), making it one of the hottest places on the planet. On Friday it was 43 degrees Celsius (109 degrees Fahrenheit).

Summer is traditionally the time when Iraqis take annual leave, and the lucky few who can afford it will escape the heat and the relentless violence to the relative cool of neighboring Syria and Jordan.

Before the 2003 U.S.-led war that ousted Saddam Hussein, only the Iraqi elite traveled abroad. Most Iraqis spent their vacations at home -- going to social clubs, picnicking in parks and visiting friends and family.

That is still possible in the more stable Kurdish north and parts of the Shi'ite south, but in Baghdad a dusk-to-dawn curfew, lawlessness and constant power outages mean there are few sources of entertainment to distract from the heat.

Under Saddam, the capital's smarter districts had almost 24 hours of electricity. But since the war that has plunged to about six hours a day, due to insurgent sabotage and an attempt to share electricity more evenly around Iraq.

WORLD CUP

"I save every penny to go abroad. I can't stay the whole summer in Iraq. There's no entertainment," said Mohammed Yousif, 34, a civil servant, who plans to spend two weeks in Syria.

"But I will spend the rest of summer at home, waiting for the power to come back on so that I can switch on my air conditioner," the Baghdad resident told Reuters.

One source of escape from the heat and violence this year has been the soccer World Cup, which has kept Iraqis glued to their televisions, power outages allowing.

"What do you mean summer holidays?" says Huda, 34, laughing bitterly. "What with the heat, security and lack of electricity, the only outlet for now is to watch the World Cup, if there is power," said the government employee who lives in Baghdad.

"When I go to work we just talk of who has been kidnapped and who has been killed."

Dina, a university student, and her husband are among the lucky few who will escape Iraq for most of the summer. Her father-in-law owns an apartment in the Jordanian capital Amman.

"We spend every summer, July and August, there," she said.

But for those traveling by road, the return journey from Syria and Jordan soon ensures they lose their cool. Getting out of Iraq can be difficult but getting back in can be even harder.

One elderly Baghdad couple returning from Syria in June were stuck for hours in a long line of vehicles at the border. Their journey home took 18 hours, after arriving on the capital's outskirts to find a night-time curfew already in force.

"When I remember the suffering we faced on our way back to Baghdad, I forget all about how much we enjoyed our holiday," said Um Riyadh, 74.

[Nictoe]

A Baghdad Commander, Armed With Pink Tulle

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 3 — Question: How do you get 15 layers of wedding cake with butter cream frosting through eight checkpoints and 45 minutes of snarled Baghdad traffic in 110 degree heat?

Answer: Hire Nadia Habib, wedding planner extraordinaire.

Ms. Habib, a 53-year-old Iraqi Christian with a strong sense of humor and a passion for weddings and cakes that can intimidate even her own clients, has worked through two wars — the current one is her third — and a decade of devastating economic sanctions.

Despite Iraq's current suffering, daily life, however strange and stunted, still moves in many of its familiar rhythms. Couples meet. They fall in love. They plan weddings.

"I tell you frankly, nothing has changed," Ms. Habib said, sitting in a large banquet hall in the Alwiya social club and thumbing through wedding albums with examples of elaborate cakes from past years. "When we get married, we still want everything to be perfect."

Nothing has changed, but everything is different. Since the American invasion three years ago, Baghdad, home to a quarter of the country's population, has descended into a state of low-grade civil war. Populations are shifting as sectarian violence changes the face of once mixed neighborhoods. Body counts in the Baghdad morgue this spring have been the highest since the invasion.

The city is now divided. Western neighborhoods have fallen to Sunni Arab insurgents. Parties are no longer possible there. In eastern neighborhoods, dominated by Shiite Islamists, singing and dancing are forbidden, so traditional wedding singers no longer take part in ceremonies.

Weddings, difficult enough in times of peace, have emerged as little battles of their own.

As the violence has increased, Iraqis have retreated inside their homes, and fewer couples are choosing to hold wedding parties in public places. Ms. Habib now sets up between two or three weddings a week, compared with five or six before the invasion. Garden settings are out, for fear of mortars and bombs. Guests are far fewer. In the past, guests often numbered 500. Now they are rarely more than 300. Weddings are now held during the day, so guests can return home in the safety of daylight, before curfew begins.

Ms. Habib, flanked by her husband, Hekmet Ayub, a smiling 61-year-old who resembles a beardless Santa Claus, forges ahead fearlessly. Like an expert hockey goalie neatly deflecting or catching every puck, she skillfully accommodates, or adjusts, every one of her customers' desires.

Flowers? Take fake. Real ones, all imported, are no longer affordable since the road from Jordan became dangerous. Gold ribbon? Beige is better, easier to buy in markets that are safe. Hand-designed invitations? Printers are scarce. Better to use a computer.

"When they want something strange and complicated, they come to me," she said, in her melodic, accented, English. "I have done many strange things," she said, laughing.

Strange began in the 1990's, after Iraq's war against Kuwait, when Iraqis, Christian and Muslim, began holding weddings in social clubs instead of their homes, to avoid the cost of putting on a huge spread. Weddings got showier, too. Ms. Habib once hid the bride and groom behind a curtain on a stage instead of marching them down the aisle. Wedding cake constructions had secret chambers that hid caged doves. Flaming swords became fashionable.

Ms. Habib ticked off her baking triumphs: A tall cake made to look like a pile of presents. A church-and-village cake. A 10-foot tower of cake layers, each on pedestals, completely encircled by balloons that floated up when a string was snipped, revealing the cake inside. A rotating cake that stopped when the bride cut into it.

But in the past three years, as bombs have smashed families, and secret killings, often sectarian, have changed entire neighborhoods, couples have developed a taste for short, simple celebrations. "They want classic style," she said, as Mr. Ayub and their helpers blew up gold balloons behind her. "They want to finish as soon as possible, to complete the party successfully."

Anything can happen. In June, a bomb in the southeast neighborhood of New Baghdad killed an aunt of a groom, and the family had to call off the celebration. In February, after the bombing of a Shiite shrine that set off a spasm of sectarian killings and then a curfew, several weddings were canceled. One couple married early in the morning and left for Jordan without a party. In each case, Ms. Habib was left with cakes she could not sell. An average set of cakes costs about $140.

"Now, when I make the cake, I am afraid," she said. "I don't know if they'll take it or not."

Baking has its own frustrations. Baghdad has only an hour of power every four hours, and most households have two other sources: the neighborhood generator, operated by a much despised 'generator man' and a small, home generator. The official price of gasoline, needed for generators, is 10 times what it was a year ago. The voltage from the generators is different from that in the city's lines, forcing families to buy appliances in pairs.

Ms. Habib works in a small addition to her house. It has seven freezers and three refrigerators, and baking supplies of all types. Flowers fill one refrigerator. Her garden, she said, is crowded with fuel containers and two large generators.

"I canceled the garden," she said.

The violence on city streets has been a serious problem for planning. Invitations used to be hand printed on Mutanabi Street, a bookseller area in central Baghdad, but few people are working anymore and the area is too dangerous anyway, Ms. Habib said. Late last month, Mr. Ayub wanted to go to Bab al-Sharji, a local market area where everything from fake police uniforms to fake flowers (his intended purchase) is for sale. Ms. Habib told him not to go. That afternoon, a large bomb killed several people there.

"Always we are worried, even when we are laughing," she said, her fingers fluttering on her chest. "I am nervous until I put the cake down and finish the party."

One of the biggest problems is simply moving around the city. Once, on her way to get the cake, a long convoy of American Humvees blocked the road for so long that she did not make it back in time for the wedding. The bride made frantic telephone calls, but Ms. Habib was helpless.

On Monday, she drove from her neighborhood in northeast Baghdad to the Hindiya Club in Karrada. It is a 20-minute drive without traffic, but since the new government imposed the latest security plan, in which Iraqi troops operate hundreds of new checkpoints around the city, it now takes almost an hour. By the time she had reached the club, the cakes, stacked three layers high in the trunk of a Mercedes sedan, had begun to look oily.

"My butter cream is strong," she said confidently. "It doesn't easily go down."

As often happens, the club refused to turn on the air-conditioning before the ceremony. That money-saving habit seemed an insurmountable obstacle in one particularly hot wedding hall. Ms. Habib resourcefully placed the cakes on the seats of her car, and left it running with the air-conditioning turned on, until shortly before the couple arrived.

"You see how we work?" she said, wiping sweat from her face with one hand and digging angrily in her purse for a small fan, and offering a second one to a reporter.

Nearby, Ms. Habib's daughter was ironing a white linen tablecloth with a fan blowing directly on her face. Three assistants, all neighbors, including a well-known soccer coach, bustled around the hall, ribbons and pins between their teeth, and wads of pink tulle under their arms. A small boy wandered among the balloons, popping them. The adults winced at the sound.

Couples keep coming. In the Alwiya club last week, Rim, 25, a dental technician, and Amar, 29, a computer programmer, were beaming as they sat with Mr. Ayub, looking over seating arrangements drawn out on a piece of paper. Relatives introduced them a few months ago in Rim's house. Amar could not stop looking at her.

"I felt my heart beating," he said, with an embarrassed smile.

The sense of danger intensifies people's feelings for one another.

"We feel that we could die at any moment," he said.

Ms. Habib chimed in.

"It's very good of us that we are living here without law," she said. "Really, it's admirable."

[Nictoe]

[theLIBERTARIAN]

From the article:

[Nictoe]

In another related article:

The Triumph of Crackpot Realism

[Nictoe]

AP Blog: Suitcases Selling Well in Iraq

AP Correspondent Robert H. Reid covers Iraq events from Baghdad for The Associated Press. AP Correspondent Rebecca Santana is embedded with the New Jersey National Guard at Camp Anaconda, Iraq.

Aug. 8, 2006
BAGHDAD

The only store open last weekend at a shopping district in Baghdad's Mansour neighborhood was the one selling suitcases. And business was brisk.

It seems like every Iraqi in what passes for the middle class either knows someone who has left or is planning to leave. Better-off Iraqis head for Jordan, Syria or the United Arab Emirates - or send their families there.

Those without enough money head for areas within Iraq where their religious sect is in the majority. With sectarian death squads lurking, there's safety in numbers. Those who stay put in places where they are in the minority are not necessarily the bravest: they just don't have enough money to leave.

Moving isn't that simple. Rents have skyrocketed in Baghdad neighborhoods that are deemed safe, a relative term here in Iraq. Many of those who flee the capital altogether end up living with relatives since chances of finding another job in provincial cities are not good.

Getting out of town can be expensive. Gasoline prices have soared. Black market prices can run as much as $4 a gallon depending on availability. Rustling up enough fuel to drive to the Shiite heartland in the south or up to the Kurdish areas in the north can set you back $80. That's a lot in a country where $400 a month is considered a very good salary. Government-subsidized fuel is far cheaper but not readily available.

Still, that's not enough to discourage Iraqis who fear for their lives. Hence, demand for suitcases is way up.

Shops along the Mansour street were closed because opening just wasn't worth the risk. Lots of merchants had received written extortion demands - pay $1,000 for "protection" or else. Nobody seemed sure who was making the demand, and maybe it was just a bluff. But in a city where men can get themselves killed for wearing shorts in public, the risk just wasn't worth it. So many shops simply closed, at least for a while.

Business hasn't been so great anyway lately. The rise in sectarian violence over the last six months has dealt a severe blow to commerce in Baghdad - as it has to nearly every other aspect of life in the capital. Once bustling commercial hubs are now nearly deserted.

Merchants are finding it hard to keep their shelves stocked because bombings, hijackings and checkpoints delay deliveries. Many Sunni Muslim customers are afraid to venture out to the jewelry stores in Shiite Kazimiyah. And Shiites aren't too keen to stroll the boutiques in the Sunni neighborhood Azamiyah. Merchants are afraid to go to wholesale markets that are located in parts of town where the "other" sect is in the majority. And with unemployment estimated as high as 40 percent among working aged men, families are strapped for cash. Whatever they have goes for the essentials such as food and basic clothing. Life's luxuries will have to wait for better times.

This is just one of the reasons the Americans are so keen to curb sectarian violence in Baghdad. Everything here depends on security. If Iraqis don't feel safe, they won't go to work, they won't spend their money and those who can leave won't even stay here.

The government can't even begin to rebuild the country's economy and social services if civil servants are fleeing the country or staying in their homes because they fear running into a sectarian militia checkpoint.

And in the meantime, the suitcase trade is booming.

- Robert H. Reid

[jpconrad]

I'm thinking about taking my family on a vacation to "the Other Iraq."

http://www.theotheriraq.com/

Check out the ads at the bottom.
_________________
General Zod 2008

[bestsynd]

Nearly every aspect of the War in Iraq has gotten worse, according to military sources. There are more bombs and more people getting killed in Iraq. One senior Defense Department official told The New York Times on the condition of anonymity that “The insurgency has gotten worse by almost all measures, with insurgent attacks at historically high levels.”

In July there were 2,625 explosive devices, 1,666 exploded and 959 were discovered before they went off. Compare that to January when there were only 1,454 bombs exploded or were found.

The source told the Times that “the insurgency has more public support and is demonstrably more capable in numbers of people active and in its ability to direct violence than at any point in time.”

Complete Best Syndication Article

[Nictoe]

A Doctor's Day in Baghdad

"It is Not a Miserable Life. It is Worse Then Miserable"

By Dr. ANON

Baghdad.

I have a big family. My eldest two are already dentists and both abroad. I have one daughter just married one month ago. so I am not yet a grandpa. Although I have perfect job satisfaction, Full Professor, with MRCP, FRCP and a couple more degrees from London and France, things are so unhappy here in Baghdad, there is no quality of life at all. There are no services: we are loaded with garbage, as it is not collected more than once every so many weeks, the garbage collectors are also afraid of being killed. We have almost no electricity, no fuel, bad water supply, and what's more you could get killed whether you are Shiite or Sunnite, if you fall in the wrong hands. I nearly got killed on several occasions, I cannot count the sheep sacrified for my safety till now.

As for our colleagues, nearly none is with me from our medical class, all have left the country, the last one two months ago, to Oman. The only one left with me is XXXXX, he is a physician in the department of Medicine

It is not a miserable life. If there is a grade more than miserable, then it will be ours!

We work no more than three days a week in the university, medical city, the one which was elegant and beautiful is now surrounded by garbage and barbwires and concrete blocks from all directions. We don't spend more than three hours maximum at work, so that totals to nine hours a week. This is the maximum that anyone is working. In the afternoons most of my colleagues say that they have completely stopped going to their private clinics, for fear of death or abduction. I do no more than one and a half hours in the afternoon, I have to feed my big family. I come back rushing to my house after that, we lock our doors and do not leave at all.

What about shopping? What shopping? You must be joking! It is called Marathon Buying, for I try to spend no more than ten minutes getting all the needed vegetables, fruits and food items--this is on my way back from university, ie three times a week. I also spend another ten minutes in the afternoon on my way back from clinic buying gas (benzine, car fuel) for my home electric generator. It is all black market reaching four to five times the official price. If I need to get it legally, I have to spend overnight in line in front of the gas station, people bring their blankets, water, food, and sleep in the street in front of the gas stations. Of course sometimes I speak nicely to the guard of the gas station, presenting my ID and my buisness card and ask them if I could fill my car off-line. Sometimes they kick me out, othertimes I would get lucky and the guard has some rheumatic complaints, back pain or knees pains and bingo! I can fill my car off-line, with a promise to bring him medicines. Of course without any physical exam or investigations, if I was too lucky, and the stars where on my side that day, then I may even be allowed to get an extra 20 litres of gas for my generator.

A month ago, there were militia men with their guns, storming the dormitories of resident doctors in the medical city. They were particularly looking for doctors from Mosul or Anbar. There was a big fuss, and target doctors went into hidings, none was caught. Next day, two of them -- rheumatology post-graduates under my supervision -- asked me to give them leave to go to their hometowns and not be back except for their exams, and that even their training and teaching be taken there. I agreed, because they were leaving anyway. They would have been killed if they were caught, not because they have done any crime, but just because they are Sunni from Mosul and Anbar.

I believe that many doctors from southern parts of Iraq, who were Shiites, also left the dormitory on that day, because they feared that they are not safe anymore, and that next time it will be their turn, when maybe Sunni militia gunmen will come. So everyone left. Actually in that week I had prepared a lecture for post-grad doctors in the medical city. No one appeared, as all resident doctors had left. Of course many have come back again, but are terrified. Yet life has to go on.

The same applies for other hospitals, services are almost non-existant now. I was in Yarmouk hospital two days ago. The resident doctor whom I was visiting was living in a place in the hospital with broken, dusty furniture, wood and metal scattered all over, doors and windows broken. It looked like an animal barn. I was requesting a death certificate for a colleague. I went with him to the morgue where he kept the death registry. Outside the morgue there were the bodies of two young men, both shot in the head, laid on stretchers in the open air. The hospital was barricaded behind huge cement walls-- the hospital itself had been targeted several times by car bombs. A few months ago, doctors in this hospital declared a one day strike because they were being regularly beaten and wounded by officers of the National Guard. The hospitals are frequently raided by militia men who pull the wounded out of their hospital beds and drag them to where they will be executed.

Attendance of patients to hospitals has dropped tremendously. We used to see an avrerage of 100 one hundred patients in our consultation clinic at Rheumatology every single day prior to 2003. We don't see more than twenty these days. Don't ask me where did the patients disappear to? Many are scared to leave their homes and go to the hospitals. The hospital used to provide medicines for the chronically ill, for diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. We used to have a monthly blood check followed by a month supply of DMRDs. These supplies are now so infrequent, blood checking is not done. Because services are so irregular, most patients got fed up and decided it is no more worth it to attend hospitals. Even simple NSAIDs most of the times are not available to patients coming for acute complaints. Many who used to come from towns and cities away from Baghdad, for better treatment in the capital city, now think it is too risky and dangerous to travel to Baghdad for follow ups. Instead, patients stop their therapy altogether, or depend on local facilities and whatever simple resources they get where they are, regardless of whether it is efficient or not. The financial situation of most families in Baghdad has gone so much down, that many find it is a luxury to treat chronic illnesses. The priority is for food, fuel and staying alive.

This is a small summary of what and how we are living.

[bestsynd]

Some critics of the war in Iraq have speculated that the war has put Americans in more danger, but now a recent “National Intelligence Estimate” (NIE) completed in April says the war has made things worse spreading radical Islamic jihadist ideology around the world. The assessment, representing a consensus of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, was intended to be classified but anonymous officials have now spoken to the press concerning the document.

Reports first appeared in the New York Times but later appeared in the Washington Post. The NIE report titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States”, says that war has helped create a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the September 11th attacks.

The Bush Administration has denied that the war in Iraq has put Americans in more jeopardy claiming it is better to fight the enemy over there rather than here. Fearing criticism against the Administration after this new disclosure, White House spokesman Peter Watkins said “"The New York Times' characterization of the NIE is not representative of the complete document. Their (the terrorist) hatred for freedom and liberty did not develop overnight; those seeds were planted decades ago. Instead of waiting while they plot and plan attacks to kill innocent Americans, the United States has taken the initiative to fight back."

Complete Best Syndication Article

[Nictoe]

Well, he's not called the president of unintended consequences for nothing !

[bestsynd]

We chose the leaders who have planned and managed the demolition. We allowed those leader to convince us that we had a great responsibility to invade the country. Our revenues have funded the occupation. We validated those leaders by reelecting them. Reports of various scandals regarding the occupation has done little more than caused changes in opinion polls. The direction of these polls have been reversed when the same reelected leaders simply tell us they are protecting us from more enemies that hate us for our freedom and that our safety is only secure if we continue to trust them and keep them in office.

With the destruction of Iraq, however, comes a huge obligation to not only rebuild the country that has been pulverized by America's “Shock and Awe” military strategy but to protect the entire region from the potential spread of Islamic sectarian feuds that are now fueling the danger in Iraq. Upon the invasion of Iraq, Charlie Reese wrote a note of sarcastic congratulations to America for willingly adopting 23 million Iraqis. He underestimated by the populations of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and, depending on the relationship with its new Kurdistan neighbor, Turkey and Kurdistan (this is by no means an exhaustive list of countries that are endangered by our noble cause).

Complete Best Syndication Article

By Bob Strodtbeck
Columnist

[Nictoe]

[Nictoe]

Bush's backpedaling on the war.

By Michael Kinsley
Sept. 22, 2006,


Harold Pinter wrote a play a while back called Betrayal. (Rent the movie: It's terrific.) The plot was a fairly mundane story about an adulterous affair among affluent London literati. What gives the tale its haunting magic is that Pinter tells it in reverse: starting with the couple breaking up and ending with that first, ambiguous flirtation.

Others have tried this device. Martin Amis used it in a novel called Time's Arrow to make some point or other about the dangers of nuclear war. There is a Stephen Sondheim musical called Merrily We Roll Along, which starts with the hero as an unattractive middle-aged Hollywood power player and ends with him as an idealistic youth gazing toward "the hills of tomorrow." A clever movie several years ago called Memento used the time-backward trick as a way to imitate for the audience the effect of amnesia.

So, it's been used by some of the masters. And it's a good trick: disorienting, as modern art is supposed to be, and with built-in poignance. But that doesn't mean that anyone can pull it off. Frankly, I would have pegged George W. Bush—whose awareness of his own weaknesses is one of his more attractive traits—as just about the last person in the world who would try this literary jujitsu. But in his own narrative of his own war (the one in Iraq), he has done it. If you trace the concept of "victory" in his remarks on Iraq, and those of subordinates, you discover a war that was won three and a half years ago, and today has barely started.

Return with me, if you will, to May 1, 2003. That was the day Bush landed on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, and—under a banner declaring "Mission Accomplished"—declared that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended" and "the United States and our allies have prevailed. (Applause.)" (This is from the official White House transcript.) The White House claimed that the banner was somebody else's idea and that Bush didn't declare victory in so many words. But Bush did use the word "victory," saying that Iraq was "one victory in a war on terror ... " And as I recall, the occasion was pretty triumphal. Perhaps you remember differently. And in his radio address two days later, Bush used the term "victory" unabashedly.

Soon, however, the concept of "victory" became more fluid. There is not just one victory, but many. Or, as then-press secretary Scott McClellan put it in August 2004, "Every progress made in Iraq since the collapse of Saddam's regime is a victory against the terrorists and enemies of Iraq." And there was a subtle shift from declaring how wonderful victory was to emphasizing how wonderful it will be. "The rise of democracy in Iraq will be an essential victory in the war on terror," the vice president said in April 2004.

During his 2004 presidential campaign, Bush said repeatedly that one reason to vote for him over Sen. John Kerry was that he, Bush, had "a strategy that will lead to victory. And that strategy has four commitments." By October 2005, these four "commitments" had been honed down to three "prongs." Then they metastasized into four "categories for victory. And they're clear, and our command structure and our diplomats in Iraq understand the definition of victory." It's nice that someone does.

It was during the 2004 campaign that Bush offered his most imaginative explanation for why victory in Iraq looked so much like failure. "Because we achieved such a rapid victory"—note that it is once more, briefly, a victory—"more of the Saddam loyalists were [still] around."

On May 1, 2006, the third anniversary of "mission accomplished," White House press secretary Scott McClellan was asked whether "victory" had been achieved in Iraq. He said, "We're making real progress on our plan for victory. ... We are on the path to victory. We are winning in Iraq. But there is more work to do." Democrats should shut up because their criticism of the president "does nothing to help advance our goal of achieving victory in Iraq." (Once victory is achieved, presumably, it will be OK for Democrats to criticize.) And make no mistake: "[W]hen the job in Iraq is done, it will be a major victory."

On Aug. 28, criticizing "self-defeating pessimism," Vice President Cheney said there are "only two options in Iraq—victory or defeat." On Aug. 31, Bush said that "victory in Iraq will be difficult and it will require more sacrifice." He predicted that "victory in Iraq will be a crushing defeat for our enemies"—which, as a tautology, is a safe bet.

Which brings us to last week, and Bush's television speech on the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001. "Bush Says Iraq Victory Is Vital" was the Washington Post's accurate headline. And Bush was eloquent. "Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more … " Well, maybe not that eloquent. But his point was the same as Henry V's: Don't give up now! "Mistakes have been made in Iraq," he conceded. He even conceded that "Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks." But let us not, for mercy's sake, learn anything from five years of experience. Instead, let's just pretend it all never happened. After all, we won this war back in 2003.

Michael Kinsley is American editor of Guardian Unlimited (London) and the founding editor of Slate.

[Nictoe]

Sectarian Mayhem in Baghdad Freezes the Lives of Young Iraqis

By SABRINA TAVERNISE
October 8, 2006

BAGHDAD, Oct. 7 — In a dimly lighted living room in central Baghdad, Noor is a lonely teenage prisoner. Many of his friends have left the country, and some who have stayed have strange new habits: a Shiite acts holier-than-thou; a Sunni joins an armed gang.

At 19, Noor is neither working nor in college. He is not even allowed outdoors.

Three and a half years after the American invasion, the relentless violence that has disfigured much of Iraqi society is hitting young Iraqis in new ways. Young people from five Baghdad neighborhoods say that their lives have shrunk to the size of their bedrooms and that their dreams have been packed away and largely forgotten. Life is lived in moments. It is no longer possible to make plans.

“I can’t go outside, I can’t go to college,” said Noor, sitting in the kitchen waiting for tea to boil. “If I’m killed, it doesn’t even matter because I’m dead right now.”

The American military is trying to address the problem. In August, it began the most systematic series of sweeps of Baghdad since the war began, trying to make the worst neighborhoods safe for a return to normal life. It appears to be bearing some fruit, with deaths in the city down about 17 percent in August from July, according to a United Nations report based on morgue statistics.

But violence between the sects here continues at a frantic pace, wiping out ever more of what middle ground remains. And it has left young Iraqis trying to resist its pull frozen in an impossible present with no good future in sight.

The speed of the descent has been breathtaking. A few short months ago, Noor was taking final exams, squabbling with his little brother and hanging out at home with his friends. But violence touched the family’s outer edge — his father’s business partner was killed on a desert road far from Baghdad because he was a Shiite — and things began to unravel.

Fearing that the man may have divulged details about them, Noor’s parents accelerated their plans for Noor and his younger brother to leave Iraq. His brother was moved to the safety of northern Iraq, but Noor was forced to return after British authorities rejected his application for a student visa.

Since coming back, he spends most days in his living room on the computer, listening to the sounds of life outside his gate. He wants to enroll in college here and even had one of his friends sneak him an application, but his parents will not let him go. Campuses are volatile mixes of sects and ethnicities, and sectarian killings of students are no longer rare.

Before the epidemic of neighborhood assassinations began last year, it was a rare middle-class Iraqi who had a peer involved in sectarian killing. But as the killing spread, increasingly larger portions of the population have been radicalized.

For Noor, a secular Sunni who is solidly middle class, the sectarian killing has broken squarely into his circle of friends. A friend from Adhamiya, Baghdad’s Sunni Arab center, joined a neighborhood militia after his father was shot to death in front of their home. Noor heard through friends that he had set up a roadside bomb to kill Iraqi troops.

“He hates the Shia because they killed his father,” said Noor, speaking in fluent English and gesturing with his hands. “He became a different person. He became a monster.”

It is that radicalization that most frightens Noor’s mother. Most of the casualties and the perpetrators in the sectarian killing are young men, and with few jobs and no hope for justice through the government, armed gangs and militias are extremely alluring.

“I’m afraid he’ll be drawn to certain currents,” she said. “There is a lot of anger inside.”

Subtler is the changing nature of his friendships. A few of his Shiite friends feel a new passion for their identity, and he now finds it difficult to relate to them.

“They changed,” he said. “They talk a lot about identity.”

“I can’t tell them my true feelings. I started to expect something bad from them.”

As little as a year ago, most Iraqis dismissed fears of sectarian war. Iraqis of different sects had always mixed, they argued, and no amount of bombing would change that. But as the texture of the violence changed from spectacular car bombs set by Sunnis to quiet killings in neighborhoods of both sects, few still cling to that belief.

Three days a week, Safe, 21, walks around sleepy. He stands guard with a machine gun three nights a week to protect his block in the ravaged neighborhood of Dora. As a Sunni, he fears Shiite death squads and policemen. Seven of his friends have been detained and beaten. He has attended more than a dozen funerals in recent months for Sunnis who have been killed.

“Sectarian stuff has come into our life from all doors,” he said, speaking in quick bursts.

“I am afraid of these checkpoints. They tell you five minutes, and keep you for a month.”

The constant battle has left a bad taste in his mouth for Shiites who strongly assert their identity. He got into a fistfight with a Shiite student at the medical school where he studies over the meaning of a Muslim holiday. His campus is in heavily Shiite eastern Baghdad, and a professor referred to the healing powers of a sacred Shiite imam during a physiology lecture this year, to the fury of the Sunni students. Even the typical Shiite jewelry, silver rings with smooth round stones, he finds irritating.

“When you see them, you want to throw up,” he said, referring to chauvinist Shiites.

Dora, once a mixed middle-class neighborhood, has been among the most lethal for Shiites over the past two years. Shiite residents report brutal killings for offenses as minor as pinning up posters of Shiite saints in shops. Now few Shiites remain.

Safe acknowledged that Shiites were singled out, but said insurgents only went after those working with Americans. Other Shiites received threats for spying on mosques, he said.

(He worked at an American base for two months shortly after the American invasion but was not threatened because those who were issuing them knew him, he said.)

For Safe, whose father died when he was young and whose mother died of cancer last year, his neighborhood watch group helps him to have a sense of purpose, to feel connected, at a time when young Iraqis are more isolated than they have ever been.

“If something happens, we are all just one hand,” he said.

While they serve as useful new social networks, the groups are largely based on sectarian identity, helping to reinforce increasingly homogeneous districts. Safe has no Shiite relatives and no plans to marry. Even if he did, he would never accept a Shiite, he said.

As Baghdad grows increasingly divided into a Shiite east and a Sunni west along the Tigris River, neighborhood life offers few opportunities for young Shiites and Sunnis to mix.

Every morning, Ali Wahid, 27, rides his motorbike past a dusty soccer park in the capital’s largest Shiite district, Sadr City, to work in southeastern Baghdad. He holds tightly to his job, a water project that is part of the American effort here, but would never agree to go west of the Tigris, where vast swaths of Sunni neighborhoods are deadly for Shiites. A friend, Hamza Daraji, who does odd jobs in Sadr City, said he had not left the district in two years.

Mr. Wahid, sitting cross-legged on the floor of his modest two-story house, says his life has improved since the American invasion. His job has allowed him to pay off debts, buy a house with his brothers and even afford to marry.

Fewer Sunnis are in his life now than there were when Saddam Hussein ruled. In some ways, relations then were easier, he said, because as the ruling class, the Sunnis, were less likely to lash out.

“Before I could joke with Sunnis about Saddam,” he said. “Now if I talk against him, I’m afraid they might hurt me later in a secret way.”

The Sharqiya Secondary School in central Baghdad began the day with a prayer on Thursday. The new headmaster, a religious Shiite, took the unusual step of telling the entire student body, several hundred girls, that “the first way we hail the Iraqi flag is by giving prayers to Muhammad and his family,” referring to the Prophet Muhammad and his family members, whom Shiites consider to be holy. Three Armenian Christians raised the flag.

“We feel desperate, desperate, desperate,” said Sena Hussein, an assistant principal whose daughter is a high school senior. The school, once known citywide for its basketball team, no longer has after-school sports, because parents consider the security situation to be too risky. Trophies in a dusty glass cabinet stand a short way from the entrance to the principal’s office. Even enrollment is down. The school used to get 150 new students a year. This year it has about 60.

Prospects for higher education for women coming of age in the capital have also dimmed.

Sara, a graceful 10th grader with perfect English and straight A’s, will not be allowed to go to college in Iraq by her parents, who fear sectarian killings en route and on campuses themselves. The caution will cut out the mixing of young Iraqi men and women, as college is the first chance they get to be together. High schools in Iraq are single-sex institutions.

“The future is totally unclear for me now,” she said, standing in the courtyard of the school as girls buzzed behind her, busily cleaning classrooms. “I don’t know what would happen to me in college. Maybe I would get killed.”

In a conversation later on her cellphone after a Ramadan dinner, Sara confided that her family was trying to leave the country, but that if they could not get out, she would seriously think about marrying after high school. Her mother married at 24, after she had earned a degree in civil engineering.

“Their time was different in a thousand ways,” she said, her young voice suddenly serious. “It’s hard for me to accept. There is no dream for me. I can’t really think clearly.”

She paused and then spoke a familiar refrain: “I really, really want to leave Iraq.”

Hosham Hussein, Omar al-Neami and Khalid al-Ansary contributed reporting.