THE LETTER FROM BAGHDAD

by Il_Bagattel, Sunday, October 10, 2004, 04:22

This was sent to me by a respected financial analyst/journalist in Texas. He found it on Richard Russell's website yesterday. This is the democracy that we have brought to Iraq.

*******************************************
Friends and Fellows,

I thought you may want to read this. It's the full text of Farnaz
Fassihi's
"private" e-mail dispatch from Baghdad. By now some of you have
probably
heard of her.

Fassihi is the Wall Street Journal's correspondent in Baghdad. A few
days
ago she wrote a private e-mail to friends and family describing both
her
life as a reporter and the situation there.

The text is devastating, and given that it was NOT intended for
publication, it is probably the most candid and credible piece of
reporting
we've got out of Baghdad recently.

Let me add (according to Tim Rutten's column in the Los Angeles Times,
who
has obtained on-the-record quotes from the WSJ editor on this) that the
Wall Street Journal is now recalling Ms. Fassihi for a "long-planned
vacation"
that will extend until past November 2nd. Which means that she's barred
from writing about Iraq until after the US election.

Here is the full text of her "private" e-mail (which was first
published on
the Poynter Institute website).
---

From: [Wall Street Journal reporter] Farnaz Fassihi
Subject: From Baghdad

Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under
virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this
job: a
chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far
away
lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a
difference.

Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq has defied all those
reasons. I am house bound. I leave when I have a very good reason to
and a
scheduled interview. I avoid going to people's homes and never walk in
the
streets. I can't go grocery shopping any more, can't eat in
restaurants,
can't strike a conversation with strangers, can't look for stories,
can't
drive in any thing but a full armored car, can't go to scenes of
breaking
news stories, can't be stuck in traffic, can't speak English outside,
can't
take a road trip, can't say I'm an American, can't linger at
checkpoints,
can't be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And
can't
and can't. There has been one too many close calls, including a car
bomb so
near our house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most
pressing
concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive
and
make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am a security
personnel first, a reporter second.

It's hard to pinpoint when the 'turning point' exactly began. Was it
April
when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when
Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when
Sadr
City, home to ten percent of Iraq's population, became a nightly
battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency began
spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most
of
Iraq? Despite President Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq remains a
disaster.
If under Saddam it was a 'potential' threat, under the Americans it has
been transformed to 'imminent and active threat,' a foreign policy
failure
bound to haunt the United States for decades to come.

Iraqis like to call this mess 'the situation.' When asked 'How are
things?'
they reply: 'The situation is very bad."

What they mean by "situation" is this: the Iraqi government doesn't
control
most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each day
around
the country, killing and injuring scores of innocent people. The
country's roads are becoming impassable and littered by hundreds of
landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers. There
are
assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The "situation," basically,
means a raging barbaric guerilla war. In four days, 110 people died and
over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that
the ministry of health -- which was attempting an exercise of public
transparency by releasing the numbers -- has now stopped disclosing
them.
Insurgents now attack Americans an average of 87 times a day.

A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr City yesterday. He said
young
men were openly placing improvised explosive devices into the ground.
They
melt a shallow hole into the asphalt, dig the explosive, cover it with
dirt and put an old tire or plastic can over it to signal to the locals
this is booby-trapped. He said on the main roads of Sadr City, there
were a
dozen landmines per every ten yards. His car snaked and swirled to
avoid
driving over them. Behind the walls sits an angry Iraqi ready to
detonate
them as soon as an American convoy gets near. This is in Shiite land,
the
population that was supposed to love America for liberating Iraq.

For journalists the significant turning point came with the wave of
abduction and kidnappings. Only two weeks ago we felt safe around
Baghdad
because foreigners were being abducted on the roads and highways
between
towns. Then came a frantic phone call from a journalist female friend
at 11
p.m. telling me two Italian women had been abducted from their homes in
broad daylight. Then the two Americans, who got beheaded this week, and
the
Brit were abducted from their homes in a residential neighborhood. They
were supplying the entire block with round the clock electricity from
their
generator to win friends. The abductors grabbed one of them at 6 a.m.
when
he came out to switch on the generator; his beheaded body was thrown
back
near the neighborhoods.

The insurgency, we are told, is rampant with no signs of calming down.
If
any thing, it is growing stronger, organized and more sophisticated
every
day. The various elements within it-baathists, criminals, nationalists
and
Al Qaeda-are cooperating and coordinating.

I went to an emergency meeting for foreign correspondents with
the military and embassy to discuss the kidnappings. We were somberly
told our fate would largely depend on where we were in the kidnapping
chain once it was determined we were missing. Here is how it goes:
criminal
gangs grab you and sell you up to Baathists in Fallujah, who will in
turn
sell you to Al Qaeda. In turn, cash and weapons flow the other way from
Al
Qaeda to the Baathisst to the criminals. My friend Georges, the French
journalist snatched on the road to Najaf, has been missing for a month
with
no word on release or whether he is still alive.

America's last hope for a quick exit? The Iraqi police and National
Guard
units we are spending billions of dollars to train. The cops are being
murdered by the dozens every day-over 700 to date -- and the insurgents
are infiltrating their ranks. The problem is so serious that the U.S.
military has allocated $6 million dollars to buy out 30,000 cops they
just
trained. This way they can get rid of them quietly.

As for reconstruction: firstly it's so unsafe for foreigners to operate
that almost all projects have come to a halt. After two years, of the
$18
billion Congress appropriated for Iraq reconstruction only about $1
billion
or so has been spent and a chunk of it has now been reallocated for
improving
security, a sign of just how bad things are going here.

Oil dreams? Insurgents disrupt oil flow routinely as a result of
sabotage
and oil prices have hit record high of $49 a barrel. Who did this war
exactly benefit? Was it worth it? Are we safer because Saddam is holed
up
and Al Qaeda is running around in Iraq?

Iraqis say that thanks to America they got freedom in exchange for
insecurity. Guess what? They say they'd take security over freedom any
day,
even if it means having a dictator ruler.

I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if Saddam Hussein were allowed
to
run for elections he would get the majority of the vote. This is truly
sad.

Then I went to see an Iraqi scholar this week to talk to him about
elections here. He has been trying to educate the public on the
importance
of voting. He said, "President Bush wanted to turn Iraq into a
democracy
that would be an example for the Middle East. Forget about democracy,
forget about being a model for the region, we have to salvage Iraq
before
all is lost."

One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For those
of us
on the ground it's hard to imagine what if any thing could salvage it
from
its violent downward spiral. The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem
has
been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and
it
can't be put back into a bottle.

The Iraqi government is talking about having elections in three months
while half of the country remains a 'no go zone'--out of the hands of
the
government and the Americans and out of reach of journalists. In the
other
half, the disenchanted population is too terrified to show up at
polling
stations. The Sunnis have already said they'd boycott elections,
leaving
the stage open for polarized government of Kurds and Shiites that will
not
be deemed as legitimate and will most certainly lead to civil war.

I asked a 28-year-old engineer if he and his family would participate
in
the Iraqi elections since it was the first time Iraqis could to some
degree elect a leadership. His response summed it all: "Go and vote and
risk being blown into pieces or followed by the insurgents and murdered
for
cooperating with the Americans? For what? To practice democracy? Are
you
joking?"

-Farnaz