Zeitgeist shift among Iraqis, too (of course)

A really revealing round-up of the views of many Iraqi bloggers was published last week by the currently exiled Iraqi blogger “Treasure of Baghdad”– ” A young reporter from a destroyed country where truth is lost and lives of the innocent are mixed with their blood.”
ToB asked Iraqis who blog in English a standard set of questions, and on October 18 he published the 16 sets of answers he’d received. They are all well worth reading. His fourth question was: Do you think the war was worth it or not? Why?
Of those 16, eight said clearly it was not worth it; six gave answers expressing uncertainty; and only two said Yes, it was worth it.
It’s not clear to me how many of these bloggers are currently living inside Iraq– some are, some aren’t– or how many had been exiles from Iraq prior to March 2003. But the fact that they blog so articulately in English, and have enough access to internet connections that they can blog with, apparently, some regularity indicates to me that either they are currently living in exile or that if they are still resident in Iraq, then they are most likely from better-off segments of Iraqi society.
In other words, these are people who should have been the natural allies of any credible democratization project inside Iraq. Some of them, like Najma of A Star from Mosul, admit to having changed their views on the value of the US invasion– towards a more critical view of it– over the past three years.
Also Zeyad, who has a pretty famous blog called Healing Iraq, did not “come out” as an open critic of the US invasion of his country until the day after ToB published his survey. In that latter momentous post, Zeyad wrote:

Another close friend of mine has been killed in Baghdad. We had lunch together in Baghdad just days before I left.
I can’t concentrate on anything any more. I should not be here in New York running around a stupid neighbourhood, asking people about their ‘issues’.
I now officially regret supporting this war back in 2003. The guilt is too much for me to handle.

(Hat-tip for Christiane for sending me to that post and through Healing Iraq to everything else mentioned here.)
In his answer to ToB’s question, “Do you think the war was worth it or not? Why?” Zeyad had answered only, “I’m afraid to answer that question.”
The Iraqi blogosphere is, of course, an area of discourse that has expanded tremendously since the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Prior to his toppling there was already, however, the redoubtable Salam/Pax blogging his way through the last days of Saddam’s rule and through the whole invasion. Salam hasn’t posted anything at all since July 18 on his current blog, which he’d renamed at some point The Daily Absurdity Report..
Amid all the terrible stories about the assaults against gay people in today’s Iraq– and the fact of his ‘out’ gayness– I just hope (a) that Salam’s safe, and probably also (b) that he is no longer in the country.
Regarding my own two long-favored Iraqi bloggers, Riverbend and Faiza, Riverbend had a 2.5-month hiatus there before her most recent post on the Lancet study. And Faiza’s been uncharacteristically quiet recently, too. She wrote this long post, in Arabic, on September 30; but nothing since.
Here’s how she started the post:

I have stopped writing on my website for a while now…
And the reason is perhaps; because I was occupied working with the Iraqis who fled the hell of life inside Iraq, or perhaps that I was bored from the same talk about the painful reality that is going on for more than three years, until I no longer like to talk, as if repeating the same words, uselessly.
Iraqis are still dying everyday; killed by trapped cars, sectarian militia, and death squads who carry out random assassinations on the streets. Or they die by assassinations organized against every nationalist or cultured Iraqi, against every scientist, doctor, or university professor…
There is someone out there who decided to assassinate everything in Iraq, everything that moves on the land of Iraq, and bears the Iraqi identity…
A Sunniey or a Shia’at, rich or poor, a Muslim or not a Muslim, cultured or not, with or against the occupation; all these are targets, and dead bodies are filling the streets, eaten by dogs…
And Bush is still living in his delusions, giving speeches about imaginary victories in Iraq. Is he fooling himself, or his people?
Perhaps both. This is what tyrants do, all over the world.
If Saddam Hussein was a tyrant, this Bush is no less a tyrant…

And near the end she tells this story:

I started working with Iraqi non-governmental organizations who work in Human Rights affairs. We receive here dislodged people from Iraq, who were threatened with death for sectarian reasons, by the death squads and the new death militia which the occupation policy spawned, to rip apart the Iraqi’s unity.
We collect donations from here and there, so we can provide for them some lodgings, cloths, and the least minimum level of a good life.
((Welfare shall remain in my nation until the Day of Judgment)) says the Holy Prophet, (may the blessings of God be upon him).
And from Baghdad, I have a short, sad story, but one which I consider to be a model for the stories of sadness from Iraq.
Some six months ago, one of our neighbors was assassinated. He used to work as an officer in the Iraqi Army. I wrote about him at the time.
He had a wife and two sons, (five and four years), Ahmad and Muhammad.
The wife, I don’t know why, lost her mind, and killed herself one month ago, in her sadness for her husband.
The children remained with their mother’s mother; a lonely, poor old woman. Their father’s kin are in Samara, where two of their uncles were killed, their grandfather was arrested, and the rest of their uncles are detained by the occupation forces.
My friends and I made an agreement to send them cloths and presents from time to time…
If I was living in Baghdad, I would have brought them to my home, to live with my family.
The Holy Prophet says: ((I, and whoever supports the orphan, are in heaven)), (may the blessings of God be upon him).

People who want to explore the recent work of Iraqi bloggers some more can find a good portal to this in this round-up from last week by Salam Adil. Salam Adil, btw, is a nom-de-plume. It is also Arabic for “A just peace.” Wouldn’t that be a great thing for Iraqis– and Palestinians and Israelis and all the peoples of the Middle East– to achieve.