Bad News from the streets of Iraq
One bizarre thing about the ongoing war/constitution-making in Iraq is that street-level accounts of what is going on vary so widely.
Margaret Wente at the Globe and Mail has probably been at the extreme of saying: Baghdad, at least, is like a Western city, and virtually everyone is better off than they were under Saddam.
Here is the other extreme: Nir Rosen, who calls Baghdad his "adopted city," in Reason Online.
He suggests the violence is pretty well constant, especially at night:
"You never hear about most of it because the press never hears about most of it. And if the press wasn't there, it never happened. Baghdad is a huge sprawling city with poor communication, and it is impossible for the press or the occupying army to know what is happening everywhere."
He speaks of increasing, not decreasing, religious hatred between Sunnis and Shiites:
"'We don't talk about civil war,' one Sunni tribal leader told me. "We just prepare for it.'"
What does the good news from the Governing Council and the Provisional Authority actually mean?
"Sunni and Shi'ite leaders were quick to condemn the new interim constitution for its secularism. They were united in calling the Quran their only constitution. They need not have worried since what happens in the walled-off 'Green Zone' of the Occupiers is a land of make believe that does not affect the rest of Iraqis living in the 'Red Zone' which is the rest of the country. Westerners who work for the Occupation in the green zone rarely venture beyond its walls; Iraq is as alien to them as they are to Iraqis."
I for one have been cheered by news that the university scene is not too bad, but:
"The minister of higher education has banned all student unions that are not ethnically or religiously based. He is forcing even Christian girls to cover their heads and instituting mandatory Islamic education."
Chillingly, the bombers, whoever, they are, may be carefully performing for Western media: "At least we didn't have to go far; the resistance is considerate enough to strike close to the hotels and neighborhoods where the press reside."
Other highlights:
"Unlike the murderous accuracy of the Israeli security forces, who at least speak Arabic, the American security forces are a blunt instrument. They arrest hundreds at once, hoping somebody will know something. One morning in the village of Albu Hishma, the local US commander decided to bulldoze any house that had pro-Saddam graffiti on it, and gave half a dozen families a few minutes to remove whatever they cared about the most before their homes were flattened."
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