Daily Life in Baghdad, from Afar ("coming apart at the seams")

[Barrett808]

Daily Life in Baghdad, from Afar
20-22 May 2005

It’s coming apart at the seams now in Iraq. We saw on the news today that members of the Mehdi Army in the south, the militia of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, exchanged gunfire with members of the ING (Iraqi National Guard) who in the south are primarily, if not entirely composed of members of the Badr Army, also a Shia group. So now we have Shia fighting Shia.

Meanwhile in Baghdad, things are just as bad. Abu Talat, my friend and interpreter, was speaking with his family who live in the al-Adhamiya district of the capital city. Just across the Tigris River from Adhamiya, which is predominantly Sunni, is the predominantly Shia Khadamiyah neighborhood.

A car bomb detonated inside Khadamiyah which killed at least one ING, so people in that area began firing guns across the Tigris into Adhamiyah. According to two sources in Adhamiyah, they confirmed there was heavy damage to several houses-broken windows, bullet pockmarked walls, etc. When people inside Adhamiyah began returning fire, a US warplane bombed a small mosque on the Adhamiyah side of the Tigris, for yet unknown reasons.

Abu Talat was talking via IM with his wife as she nearly fainted because bombs and gunfire were so near their home.

“What can I do,” Abu Talat asked me from a nearby computer at an internet café, “My family is in great danger and what can I do to help them?”

(more)

http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/dispatches/000248.php

[bpilgrim]

1. somehow Bill Clinton thinks this will be GOOD for the whole REGION?!?

Bill Clinton: Iraq Changes Good for Region

as well as the rest of our CORPORATE 'leaders' :argh:

peace