Reflections on #Feb25 protests in Iraq

When I heard about Feb 25^th I was of course excited, being the optimist and idealist I am; crazy ideas started running through my head. However after mulling over things and remembering what the streets were really like I came to the conclusion that things would probably never change, Iraqis are too divided and our people are too tired from years of suffering. But watching yesterday’s coverage changed my mind. In fact I felt like I was even watching scenes from Egypt when Iraqis brought rubbish bags and were picking up the rubbish left around – though I wish people would do this for all other areas, not just areas of protest; I mean Iraq’s streets are covered with rubbish and the rubbish men will only take your household rubbish for cash in hand!

Some Iraqis were quite creative in these protests - shows some haven’t lost their sense of humour. Some were carrying funny placards with cartoons of Maliki. Others were carrying fanooses - a fanoos is a lantern sort of thing that Iraqi’s use when there is no electricity - I suppose they were carrying them to symbolize the lack of electricity. I also remember seeing a guy carrying around a doll holding the Iraqi flag, an empty canister of water and something else I could not make out. I interpreted this to be a symbol of the Iraqi government - that the Iraqi government is filled with puppets who are like children and unable to provide basic services. The chants varied but many were condemning corruption and demanding proper services. Some were chanting that Iraq’s oil is for the people and not for the thieves in parliament.

Ofcourse only Al-Sharqiya TV was covering these protests. Al-Iraqia on the other hand, the State sponsored TV channel, had random songs playing and what not and then random condemnations from the government or warnings of violence here and there. I’m fairly certain any violence or if any explosive cars were to be used it would have been set up by Maliki and his cronies anyway. I found it funny that the people’s right to protest was recognised by the government but then a curfew was placed in Baghdad and all the roads were blocked with concrete blocks making it almost impossible to get to places like Tahrir Square in Baghdad – yet people persevered and walked. Al Jazeera was quite quiet on the matter too. I felt like no Western media covered anything in fact.

Protestors were met with brutality as expected. Tear gas, water cannons, sound bombs and live bullets are not a surprise – they are capable of MUCH worse. Ironically some protesters were sprayed with water… why don’t the idiots preserve the water and give it to the people to drink? It’s one of the things they’re demanding! I read reports about journalists being attacked and arrested and what not. That’s no surprise at all; controversial journalists are on the Iraqi government hit-list for sure.

I spoke to family and friends who said they were just staying home for the day, fearing to leave the house. Others said they had their internet cut off. Some were quite distraught at the amount of loss of life and were extremely shaken up by what had happened. Obviously it all depends on where in Iraq you are and how involved you get.

I am however a little confused and unsure about the objectives of the protests. I have heard several different things. Some came out on TV and said they had nothing to do with politics and are demanding basic services only. Some are demanding peace, reforms, security and an end to corruption. Somewhere else I read that there were three objectives:
-Full pull out of all the American Troops and to never set foot on Iraqi Soil to give the country back its full sovereignty
-Resignation of the Whole Government including all the parties that use religion or ethnic race as a facade of purity to cover up for their corruption
-Better services (electricity, water and jobs for the Iraqi people).

I really like those three objectives however I cannot verify the credibility of the source. I think that if the youth really do start asking for a regime change and lead this then the uprising in Iraq might really go somewhere!  I think we need to deal with the root of the problem – namely the occupation and the puppets that have been installed i.e REGIME CHANGE – and not just the outcome of the problem which is things like lack of electricity, basic services and jobs i.e REFORMS. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how this all turns out. I still have that little bit of hope that somehow people might stop being so divided and unite. May the youth of Iraq learn from their Egyptian brothers and sisters who were in the frontlines in asking for REGIME CHANGE. I urge all Iraqi protestors to ask for a regime change and not just simple reforms that won’t really change anything in the long run. Change does not come from the top down; it should come from the bottom up. Supposedly Saturday is a day of civil unrest in response to the clashes on Friday. We’ll just have to wait and see…

RIP to all those who lost their lives on this day in Mosul, Fallujah, Tikrit, Basra, Samarra, Kirkuk and anywhere else I have missed!

Emptiness

I think I am finally ready to put my fingers to the keyboard and try put some words together whilst attempting to be coherent as possible. Maybe I’ll try making sense of the world somewhere along the line. I think the Middle Eastern uprisings have taken me out of the sluggish and depressed mood I’ve been in. But what really did it was what I stayed up watching last night; the protests in Iraq.

I have just spent 7 weeks in Iraq. I had hoped to blog quite often about what I saw and what I experienced but between the lack of electricity and my grandfather getting sick – blogging took a back seat. My reflections were reduced to late nights wrapped in blankets with a torchlight in one hand and a pen in the other.

My grandfather then passed away while I was there. May his soul rest in peace.  Allah yir7ama. I am sensitive and quite emotional so it was one of the hardest things for me to deal with. Of course I can be a rock at times when it is needed, but at other times I just break down and this was one of those times. You see, I am not an Iraqi that has lived through war; I am not an Iraqi that has lived through pain and suffering in Iraq.  I lived in the West; I was safe and sound while my family slept with guns under their pillows, while they tried to get on with their daily lives to the rhythm of war drums. Such experiences make you strong. Such experiences make you ruthless. Such experiences give you a heart of steel. My nerves will never be as tough as those who have lived in Iraq their entire life. I couldn’t accept the fact that hospitals refused to take him in, it was just not right. I had so much resentment towards the failure of a system we have in Iraq and whilst I would never question the will of God I still sometimes think about what would have happened if we actually had real hospitals and doctors in Iraq.

I was so depressed when i came home (although, i consider Baghdad home – but whatever).  I felt like there was no hope. I felt like I had all the hope ripped out of me. I felt so disgusted at what i saw. I hated thinking about what Iraq has become and what the Iraqi people have become. I am an idealist; I have crazy ideas and plans and have a utopia in mind for Iraq when I think 10 years down the line. However the more I visit and stay in Iraq, the more I become a realist… or maybe even a pessimist. I came to see things for how they really were. And I assure you, it was not fun. It was eye-opening yet heart breaking more than ever. My dreams fade that little bit more every time I think about what’s really going on in Iraq.

As soon as i came back it was head first into arguments with Iraqi’s who believe that Iraq is now liberated.  These arguments make me die a little on the inside each and every time. I just can’t believe I’m still having these same conversations with people. How is it at all possible for people to have such messed up opinions? These idiots live in the West; they live comfortable lives and try to forget the reality in Iraq on a daily basis. If it was so liberated why don’t they bloody move back there!? They have no idea what really happens in Iraq. They barely know what happened in the 2003 war let alone anything before that. Please go pick up a history book you apathetic Iraqis. I don’t even know why I bother sometime.  It is just a waste of time and energy.

I have many things to share and stories to tell about the experiences I have had in Iraq. I will post what I saw and heard accordingly in following posts. But first, the Iraqi protests…

The Streets of Baghdad

On arrival to beautiful Baghdad i felt a surge of happiness, driving through the streets on the way to my grandparents house from the airport i felt like i was home. It is always nice to unite with family after spending a year apart. That same evening Iraq's Mesopotamian Lions played Kuwait's soccer team but unfortunately lost, had it been any other country other than Kuwait it might have been okay. But none the less Iraqi's were still out on the streets cheering and dancing, the same streets where death lurks amongst the rubble and inbetween the cars. Our soccer team may have lost that night but the peoples spirits were lifted, you could see it in their eyes, even if it was just for that night. Iraqi's could forget the sectarianism that has bled us dry and unite for once, unite for the love of Iraq, for the love of a land long lost, a land we yearn for.


Intact Iraqi families are now a rarity, at the airport mum ran into some old aquantances and we heard yet another story of a broken Iraqi family, half here, half there. These stories always remind me of Eid, when people call up the TV channels and send their eid wishes, the calls from outside were flooding in and every person had a story to tell and a family back in Iraq to wish a happy eid. As long as the government refuses to form or forms along ethno-sectarian divisons, sectarian violence will grow, and the Iraqi diaspora will continue to grow also. Long live the days where people of occupied war torn lands could share a meal with their entire family. Now families of the oppressed are characterised by long distance phone calls and emails.


Initially i had thought things in Iraq were better than last year, i told myself that things were better because people were smiling. Things were better because there were more shops and more people on the streets, the city felt more alive. Things must be better, right? Wrong. On a superficial level things may have improved, yes there are some new houses being built and yes there are a couple of new shops here and there that have opened since i was last here but the streets of Iraq are filled with stories of broken families and faces full of despair, faces that lack hope.


Driving around within Bagdad you will see that people are tried, their faces full of sorrow and sadness. From the man who sits outside his house all day selling bits and pieces hoping to make a bit of income to get him through the day or to be able to have dinner that night, to the women who sit outside the mosque with no place to go, hoping that those who have just come out of Friday prayers can spare them some change so they too can eat that night. As for the streets, rubbish is scattered everywhere, just like the broken hopes dreams of Iraqis. Old cars are left to rust on the streets, some left burnt after explosives placed in them, burnt like the hearts of Iraqis.


In Baghdad a ten minute journey turns into an hour long journey waiting at checkpoints (which are to prevent explosions but are essentially pointless), weaving in and out of cars and giving what you can to the man who stands in the middle of the road without a leg selling tissues or the woman with no place to go but to sell chewing gum on the street, whatever she can get her hands on. Checkpoints are supposed to provide safety and security but more often than not the soliders or police officers are not even checking the cars that go in and out so the wait in traffic is for nothing. And so we must then always expect the unexpected, at any moment a roadside bomb or a bomb stuck under a car can go off and kill dozens, leaving families waiting wondering, most of which goes unreported in Western media. People try and lead normal lives, but their hands on their hearts each time they leave the house, hoping they will return.


The streets of Baghdad are filled with stories of the fallen and the forgotten. The brother kidnapped and tortured, his family unaware of his whereabouts. The uncle that was assassinated for his name. The mother who died giving birth to a baby born with deformities, a baby barely able to breathe and dies soon after its mother. The father whose car blew up on his way to work, his family left to pick up the pieces. The sister who was kidnapped, raped, and left to rot in an old cell.  The boy who went to buy some groceries but never returned. The little girl in the yellow dress, shot dead by occupation forces driving by for no reason at all. Every person you encounter in Iraq will have a story of a fallen family member or a forgotten friend. There are also stories of the brave. The hundreds of widowed women who keep their families going. The young men who are studying and keeping out of trouble, praying and hoping they will be able to find jobs when they graduate. Family men who work the entire day in order to put food on the table. As it stands, the stories of the fallen and the forgotten triumph over the brave, but i hope that one day the stories of the brave will overwhelm the stories of the fallen and forgotten. One day.

What will become of us?...

Dubai is a place that always gets me thinking. Thinking about Arabs, thinking about Muslims and the Ummah, and thinking about what we have all become. This place always opens my eyes up to the depressing realities we are faced with. I made a few observations in Dubai that spoke to a bigger picture, the last being particularly disheartening.


After an extremely long and uncomfortable flight we arrive in Dubai and are about to line up to get our visas/passports stamped. My mother and I were, in a strong Iraqi accent, discussing which line to go and stand in when one of the men working at the airport approaches us and asks what kind of passports we have. He was obviously expecting us to tell him we have Iraqi passports and was quite surprised when I told him our passports were foreign. By foreign, I mean Western. Now, this little occurrence is very telling, it speaks to a broader theme of treatment in airports depending on the type of passport you have, ultimately the nationality you are recognised with. In the Arab world Western passports are privelleged, if you have a Western passport you are treated like a star. Had I told the man we had Iraqi passports and were using these to enter Dubai, it would have been a very different story, our treatment would have been VERY different. There is a huge social stigma around Iraqi's and Iraqi passports at airports. We would have had to wait in a different line and apply for a visa or have had this previously organised, whereas with a Western passport visas are granted on the spot along with a complementary smile and welcome. Now, isn’t it odd for states to treat their fellow muslim or arab brothers and sisters with such disregard, well, you would think so but it happens all too often in most countries in the Middle East. What angers me is the double standard here. Why should I be treated any better than another Iraqi who does not hold a foreign or Western passport, I mean essentially we are the same. We have had this happen in many other countries all over the Middle East, we are treated like stars while other Iraqi's are treated like dirt, but what makes me any better? The flashing of a passport should in no way determine your treatment. If anything Iraqi's who lived through the war should be treated better, those of us who have foreign passports grew up outside and never saw the atrocities they saw.  This, in my opinion, speaks to the bigger issue that the Muslim Ummah is divided and remains to be. We treat those who have othered us and looked down on us with the respect we really should be treating our brothers and sisters with. Not only that, but we try to speak the language of the Empire - the language of violence and exclusion, and this ultimately leads to the othering of our own people. 


Another quick observation which I always make as soon as I touch down in the Middle East, is the way they treat the workers and maids etc. I mean, the men who load your bags into the car at the airport, could you not just be nice to them? Why do Arabs have to put themselves above these people? Is it because the West has looked down on us for so long that we need to look down and ‘other’ others to make up for our treatment? Two wrongs certainly don’t make a right. People don’t realise that God could have easily put them in the other position but he didn’t because he is testing them with the privilege they have been given. The general lifestyle of people in Dubai is very luxurious, way too over the top in my opinion. Am I the only arab that doesn’t like the luxuries of Dubai? Possibly. I really don’t understand why it is so hard for people to understand that I would rather sit and read and write (or even stare at the walls!!) than go out and consume overpriced food, sit in overly fancy restaurants, buy unnecessary things and engage in meaningless conversations when my brothers and sisters all around the world have almost nothing. I am just not interested. Don’t get me wrong, its not that I am anti-social, I would prefer to call myself ‘selectively-social’. Take me to a museum or a good book shop or take me to sit in a park and talk politics and I am so there. But when it’s unnecessary and extravagant - count me out.


During one of these moments in Dubai where we were sitting in a overpriced fancy restaurant engaging in quite pointless small talk, something bigger came up, the issue of boycotting Israel and Starbucks in particular. Now you'd think that people being aware of the issue having grown up on this side of the world wouldnt be so blatant in their indifference. Actually, it was more than indifference, it was almost supportive of starbucks. So obviously I am the one who is going on about the boycotting and Israel and Palestine etc and the most of the adults on the table, after some arguing, were able to acknowledge that starbucks is something to be boycotted but had excuses like 'but their tea is so good' and 'I tried to boycott but I couldn't', you know, typical stuff that people come up with. So the discussion that follwed was what left me dumbfounded. A girl, about 16 years old, said she didnt care where her money was going as long as she gets a good coffee, she expressingly said she didnt care what they used the money for and that she had no part to play because she was buying coffee and only that. Now, not only did this enrage me, but it also worried me, worried me for the future. If we have youth with this sort of mindset now, what will things be like later? The youth are the adults of tomorrow. What will things be like in 10 years time, what will become of us? I really hope the snowball effect is not what we are heading towards, however, sometimes I do get the felling we are heading down that path after having spoken to youth and seen the huge gaps in their knowledge regarding the Palestinian cause. Never in my life have I heard anyone say somethig of such content and with such confidence, I mean there is a huge difference between finding it hard to stop buying coffee from starbucks and straight up not caring about what the money you paid for starbucks is used for. If we let them control our minds and let them convince us that the tea is too good to stop buying or if we start to think that we cant do anything by boycotting then we have lost the battle before its even begun.


I dont know. Right now I am angry, I cant stop sneezing and I haven't slept for a very long time. I dont feel like I am making much sense either. So, with that, I will end here. But in the mean time though we need to encourage people to treat their fellow brothers and sisters with respect no matter what their passport and we need to start treating our workers (if any) with moral respect. Lastly we need to figure out how to open up a coffee place called "Intifada-bucks" and make it just as successful as Zion-bucks, or something...

First post... Hello blogging world!

So I’ve been meaning to start a blog for some time now and I’ve finally managed to find the time and brain space to do so. I have a lot of things to say, things most of which I simply cannot find a circle of people who are genuinely interested in or share similar thoughts, may it be political or apolitical. Hence, thought this would be something beneficial to start. I am yet to find a good handful of people who are on the same wavelength as me in this world, the few who already exist in my life I can count on one hand. Quite disheartening really, the apathy all around me almost makes me want to give up at times.

Why Tears of Tigris? The Tigris River was one of the greatest rivers, part of ancient Mesopotamia, along with the Euphrates River. These rivers were character of a place now long gone – ‘The Cradle of Civilisation’.  All the ancient cities of Mesopotamia were built on the banks of this river and modern day Baghdad is an outcome of this.  Unfortunately this is the same river that flowed with blood during heightened violence in Iraq, a direct result of the illegal and inhumane US war and occupation of Iraq, turning the beautiful blue into a shocking red. But no matter what, it will still continue to hold huge importance in the region as it is part of an inerasable history, a history that imperialism has tried so hard to obliterate. So this is a tribute to the rivers beauty and to all the tears we have shed for lost loved ones caught in the middle of the greedy battle for land, power, money and resources, and to those whose blood has ultimately ended up in this river. This is a dedication to all of the faces in the sea of oppression.

As for who I am, well, it’s not really that important. I am your fellow comrade in humanity. All you really need to know is that I am an Iraqi Muslim woman, born in Iraq but denied the right to live there, however I was lucky enough to be given an opportunity to start a new life abroad. I suppose you will learn more about me as time progresses. As someone who was raised outside of Iraq my thoughts and opinions are of an insider that has not seen the atrocities up front but has lived through them and witnessed from the outside, ultimately adding to the Iraq narrative. I frequently visit family in the Middle East and it just so happens that I will be travelling back home very soon, another reason to start a blog, and so here I will share my experiences with you, whoever you may be. 

I hope that through my words people are able to learn a bit more about Iraqi’s and their suffering, even though I certainly cannot speak for all the Iraqi people.  I also hope this encourages you to want to take action. I implore you to go beyond tears, we should not only stand in solidarity with our fellow people but we must take action, even if the action is simply changing the mind of one person. We have not lost the battle for hearts and minds just yet. We owe it to our brothers and sisters in the struggle. I hope to incorporate stories of the fallen, the forgotten and the brave of Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and other groups of oppressed people as ‘Tears of Tigris’ goes on.