A Different Baghdad - ('How many times can they kill us?' )

[Kadie]

This reporter returned to Baghdad last month, she was last there in 2005


A Different Baghdad

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Last Updated: December 29, 2006, 04:48:11 AM PST


By HANNAH ALLAM
McCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

BAGHDAD, Iraq —

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I asked my colleagues to arrange meetings with old Iraqi sources — politicians, professors, activists and clerics — only to be told they'd been assassinated, abducted or exiled.

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So many blindfolded, tortured corpses turn up that an Iraqi co-worker recently told me it was "a slow day" when 17 bodies were found. Typically, the figure is 40 or more. When the overflowing morgue at Yarmouk Hospital was bombed last month, one of our drivers wearily muttered, "How many times can they kill us?"

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I covered a day of the Saddam Hussein trial because I was curious to see the dictator in person. When I returned to the office, none of my Iraqi co-workers asked about their former president. They despise him, to be sure, but they shrugged and declared him yesterday's news, as irrelevant to their lives as the current crop of leaders cloistered in the Green Zone with no control over the anarchic landscape outside.

Survival is their chief concern, and it's reflected even in greetings. Local custom calls for a string of flowery salutations, but these days the response to "Shlonak?" — How are you? — is shortened to one word: "Alive."

Electricity is on for just a couple of hours a day in most districts. Gas lines stretch for block after block. Food prices are higher than ever, especially for fresh produce, which requires rural farmers to make the treacherous drive to Baghdad markets. The water is contaminated. Gunmen in police uniforms stage brazen mass abductions, evaporating faith in the Iraqi security forces.

more...
http://www.modbee.com/local/v-dp_morning/story/13151169p-13796726c.html

here is another link...
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/16341418.htm?source=rss&channel=charlotte_news




A mother grieves with her son outside Baghdad's Yarmouk Hospital on Wednesday. Her other son was killed in a car bomb attack. The hospital morgue was bombed last month, prompting the reporter's driver to ask, 'How many times can they kill us?'
KHALID MOHAMMED/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS