Four years on in Iraq, will I live or die?
Thu Mar 8, 2007 12:49PM GMT
By Ahmed Rasheed
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - When U.S. forces invaded Iraq four years ago, I never
expected to find myself three weeks later standing guard outside my house
with an AK-47 assault rifle to ward off looters.
It was April 9, 2003, the same day a statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled
down live on television. U.S. forces had swept virtually unopposed into the
capital. Saddam had fled.
The looters who were ransacking Baghdad made me feel uneasy as they sped
past my home, their cars stacked with anything they could lay their hands
on.
But I dared to think about a better future.
I did not dwell on the chaos that accompanied Saddam's collapse, preferring
to enjoy new-found freedoms.
A few days later I took out a satellite dish I had kept hidden for five
years in a big pigeon cage. Being caught with one meant prison under Saddam.
I used a screwdriver to scrawl "Satellite Freedom" into the wall.
Those days of hope were short-lived.
I first tasted the sour new reality when American troops arrested my
70-year-old brother-in-law in May 2003 in the city of Samarra, where my
wife's family lives.
Saeed Hassan's family was distraught. We eventually found out he had been
taken to the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. I was a lawyer, so I began
going there, trying to find out why he had been arrested.
Hassan spent a year in Abu Ghraib. He was killed in April 2004 when
insurgents fired mortar bombs at the jail. An American soldier once told me
Hassan had been detained because he was a security risk. I never found out
why.
MORE SORROW
With Iraq turned upside down, I did not return to my job as a lawyer for the
Iraqi Customs Office until November 2003.
That lasted until September 2005, when I won a large case. The losing party
made veiled threats so I decided to quit. I began working for Reuters a
month later.
When I thought the violence in Iraq could not get worse, it did.
Bombers believed to be from al Qaeda entered a revered Shi'ite mosque in
Samarra at dawn on February 22, 2006, setting off charges that destroyed the
shrine.
That act sparked a wave of sectarian bloodletting.
When word of the bombing started coming in, I was in the Reuters office in
Baghdad. I called my wife, Sura, to tell her to be careful, especially
because she is from Samarra.
Minutes later, she called back in grief.
Shi'ite militiamen had just dragged my sister-in-law, Um Ziad, a widow, from
her home in Baghdad and shot her dead simply for being a Sunni. She was 62.
Four months later, a neighbour called to tell me a bomb had gone off outside
my home, badly wounding Sura in the leg. Decent medical care in Baghdad was
a thing of the past. I took her to Jordan for treatment.
FEAR
To the outside world, Iraq is synonymous with car bombs, death squads and
fear.
Electricity blackouts happen every day. Queues for petrol in a country with
the world's third largest oil reserves stretch for hundreds of metres.
Almost every day I wake up, wondering if I will live or die.
Last February, a roadside bomb exploded right outside my home. It had
apparently been intended for a passing Iraqi army patrol but hit a pick-up
truck.
It decapitated the driver and blew out the windows of my house, spattering
blood and bits of flesh on the walls.
I cannot think of an Iraqi who has not been touched in some way by the
violence of the past four years.
When I reflect on what we have been through, I sometimes recall my first
encounter with an American soldier.
It was three days after U.S. tanks had entered Baghdad. I opened my door to
find the soldier crouched on the street and holding a pump action shot gun.
I asked him if there was a problem. He looked at me and said: "Sir, we are
here to protect you. We are here to liberate you from Saddam's regime and
bring you elections to choose your president freely."