Category: Linkees

Laila and Nur; Rami

So I see Laila el-Haddad has announced her baby’s birth now. She has fabulous pics there of adorable little Nur (= “Light”… very Quaker!) alone, and of Nur with her Dad, her proud big brother, and with the ever-beautiful Laila herself.
As the first commenter on that post there says, “May she grow up in a free and peaceful Palestine!”
As Laila says there, she did indeed take her laptop to the hospital with her, and on Wednesday or so she and I had a great little IM session in which she told me all about the speedy delivery. (I had earlier told her about the very speedy delivery of my second child, name of Leila, in Beirut back in 1979, so we recalled that conversation, too.)
And talking of fun interactions with fellow-bloggers… since I’m here in Lebanon I took the opportunity to meet Rami Zuraik, author of Land and People. Meeting Rami was every bit as rewarding as I had hoped. Turns out we have huge numbers of concerns and many friends in common.
We talked a bit about the US elections. He said that he felt US influence over the whole world is so great that people everywhere are strongly affected by the US political process. True enough. So he said he felt, actually, like a completely unenfranchized citizen of the US. (Correct me if I phrased that poorly, Rami.) I told him about the theory I’ve expounded here a number of times in recent years, to the effect that the relationship between the US citizenry and the world’s 6-billion-p-lus non-Americans is analogous to the apartheid-era relationship between the South African “Whites” and the country’s completely unenfranchized majority…
Also, it turn out I was wrong when I wrote about Rami’s blog here, back in November, when I said he is Palestinian. He is indeed, as (yet another) Leila noted there, Lebanese, and married to a Palestinian.
We talked about a huge number of really important and interesting things, though only scratching the surface of all there was to say. In response to Vadim, who commented here yesterday that I have burned up a huge amount of carbon to get here to Lebanon, I would say that a conversation like the one I had with Rami Zuraik, or others that I’ve had while here, are quite impossible to have in a non-physical encounter– though my experience is that once I’ve met someone in person, that establishes a level of mutual understanding from which it’s possible to continue to have great communications through electronic media.
Also, without getting defensive here, I should note that from Lebanon I’ll be traveling– overland– to Syria for a week; and I hope the combined results of all these meetings in both countries make my CO2 emissions more justifiable?

Lives and livelihoods in two ME blogs

My able tech assistant (and son) put Google Reader onto my computer as well as the Analytics last week. He said it’s the best RSS reader he knows, and showed my how you can aggregate different feeds into tags and themes, etc.
That meant I needed to go through the slightly chaotic collection of blogs that I’ve been tagging with my “Delicious” system over the past few months, and pick out a subset to put into my Google Reader. Lots of the “usual suspects” there– including a couple of the BBC’s excellently organized RSS feeds, Juan Cole, TPM, etc, etc. Two that I put in that have given me particular pleasure reading the feeds from have been these:

    Inside Iraq, a blog written by half a dozen of the very dedicated Iraqi journalists who work for the McClatchy news bureau in in Baghdad.

As you may know, McClatchy’s news coverage is about the best there is from Iraq, and this is due overwhelmingly to the work of these Iraqis. In the blog, though, they get to write much more informally about their lives and the neighborhoods they live in. Now that Faiza and Riverbend are no longer in Iraq to give us their vividly written, very intimate accounts of what daily life is like there, Inside Iraq is the next best thing.
Read Correspondent Hussein’s recent reflection about the tragedy of Dying Alone, or Sahar IIS’s post about the trouble her dental-student daughter has been having finding enough patients to practice her skills on. Or, come to think of it, any of the posts on the blog, and you’ll learn a lot about what out-of-the-office life is like for– I should imagine– mainly middle-class Iraqis these days.
(Plus, remember that these writers are different from many Iraqis because on the one hand they have jobs, but on the other the jobs they have make many or most of them direct targets for insurgents, so their lives are often lived under tremendous pressure.)

    Land and People, a blog described as “A source on food, farming, and rural society” that’s written by American University of Beirut agronomist Rami Zurayk.

Zurayk provides a lively and very well-informed take on agricultural issues as they affect not just Lebanon but also most other countries outside the rich world. He writes a lot about international agricultural policy (e.g. here and here.) He also dives into a lot of specifics about agricultural and environmental issues within Lebanon itself, including with this recent little reflection on recipes that use pomegranate, the health benefits of pomegranates, etc.
On his sidebar, he has links to some of his more political writings. He’s a Palestinian. (L&P also recently had an interesting post expressing his views on a project aimed at Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian cooperation in seedstock improvement.)
… With both of these blogs, as with many others that I have learned a lot from in recent years, what I’ve found of particular value is the opportunity to read these views/posts as they were directly and thoughtfully written by the authors, and un-mediated by the editorial or story-shaping choices of corporate editors. It is truly incredible, the whole new set of windows that the internet gives us into the lives, views, and concerns of other people around the world. (Thanks, Darpa!)
I think we should also give special recognition to McClatchy, a media corporation that respects and trusts the people who work– and risk their lives– for it enough to allow them to write the Inside Iraq blog.
If any of you can recommend other blogs that have similar qualities of immediacy, good writing, thoughtfulness, and insight into the lives and livelihoods of people who live outside the rich portions of the world, do please send in a comment that has, obviously, the URL, and also your own short note on what you find distinctive about it. Thanks!

Riverbend’s back…

She has a new post today, here.
(I’ll be back soon, too, with a new post. Still basking in having had a real vacation.)
Riv and her family are in Damascus; and she writes quite a lot about how it is to be an Iraqi refugee there:

    We live in an apartment building where two other Iraqis are renting. The people in the floor above us are a Christian family from northern Iraq who got chased out of their village by Peshmerga and the family on our floor is a Kurdish family who lost their home in Baghdad to militias and were waiting for immigration to Sweden or Switzerland or some such European refugee haven.
    The first evening we arrived, exhausted, dragging suitcases behind us, morale a little bit bruised, the Kurdish family sent over their representative – a 9 year old boy missing two front teeth, holding a lopsided cake, “We’re Abu Mohammed’s house- across from you- mama says if you need anything, just ask- this is our number. Abu Dalia’s family live upstairs, this is their number. We’re all Iraqi too… Welcome to the building.”
    I cried that night because for the first time in a long time, so far away from home, I felt the unity that had been stolen from us in 2003.

Read Faiza’s latest post– read it NOW

Faiza al-Arji is a compassionate, very smart and percipient Iraqi engineer (and the mother of three talented, hard-working young adults.)
Faiza has been in Amman for around a year now, working hard to get desperately needed water-treatment systems back to the distressed communities in her homeland.
Every well-off westerner who buys silly little plastic bottles of water for no reason should stop immediately and donate all the money saved to Faiza’s project.
Anyway, today we finally have the English translation of the long post that faiza put onto her blog in Arabic last week.
She writes about the many contacts she has with doctors and others coming out of Iraq:

    All stories are entangled, sometimes contradicting, but they tell about the conditions in the sad Iraq today, the conditions of the sad Iraqi people, as if they are tossing in fire, escaping one fire to another… from the fire of daily killings, kidnapping and panic, to the fire of expatriation in neighboring countries; indescribable suffering and humiliation, without a legal residency permit, without the right of acquiring a job, without the right to educate their children, while free medical treatment is provided to an extent by some organizations, but very limited…
    The reality conditions of the Iraqis say that the entire world abandoned them, and even those who want to help them are helpless, tied handed, and scared…
    That is what I have seen from the reality of the organizations working to help Iraq; it is not a matter of administrational corruption or bad programs, but the organizations, even the big ones, are helpless and tied handed, afraid of Bush and his administration, because then he would accuse them of supporting terrorism, if they helped the miserable, sad Iraqi people…
    The world is living a dangerous phase of its history, as evil people control the decision-making in the major countries, frightening all who try to do good, accusing them of serious charges to destroy their reputations and future…
    But there are still some brave men and women who do not care or fear… they extend the humanitarian-aid hand to Iraq and the Iraqis, individually or through non-governmental organizations. We pray to God to bless them, support them, stabilize them, and give them the strength to do good, amen.

She writes about the terrible daily living conditions for the million or so Iraqi refugees in Jordan.
She writes:

    Where is the responsibility of the Iraqi government?
    Where is the responsibility of the American government?
    Where is the responsibility of the United Nations?
    These three should bear the responsibility of what happened to Iraq, excluding others…
    These three laid down the legitimacy of this war, and are still evading the responsibility of what human catastrophes befell Iraq… they are still hiding what is truly happening in Iraq, their declarations always lying, saying that all things in Iraq are moving in the healthy direction, that issues are moving towards the better…
    I think that the first step to solve the problems of the sad, wounded Iraq is to admit, by those three that the situation is catastrophic, and to present humanitarian aid to the Iraqis inside who were displaced from their homes and still are, to those who were wounded or crippled because of the violence and bombings, to those who lost the head of their family and their daily bread source. Those three should take responsibility for all that is happening to the Iraqis, to compensate the devastated families with medical and nutriment aid, to solve the problems of the displaced by getting them back to their homes, by providing protection to their residential areas by a national, clean Iraqi Army, one distinguished with high professionalism, not infiltrated by sectarian gangs and militias who would kill their citizens….
    But the painful reality is that the Iraqi government lives isolated from the sufferings of its people, its men broadcast speeches that do not belong to reality, but whoever hears them believes that Iraq is sinking into happiness and welfare; there are just a few terrorists from Al-Qai’ida, whom we will eliminate, then live happily ever after…
    It is a catastrophe when a lying, thieving administrator becomes the head responsible in a small-scale company… then what is the size of the catastrophe in a country like Iraq, which became under the mercy of officials most of whom are liars and thieves?
    Oh, poor Iraq…

She writes:

    Now , Iraqis are divided into supporters of the occupation, and rejecters of it…
    According to my assessments and observations since the beginning of the war until now, the supporters are a minority of beneficiaries who work with the present government or with the occupation; companies and contractors, and those are completely isolated, fearing to mingle with the Iraqis in fear for their lives inside Iraq, but those of them who are here in Amman declare their opinions openly without fear, and of course they drive the latest models of cars, they and their sons and daughters, they own the most luxurious palaces in Amman, and frequent the fanciest restaurants and nightclubs…
    Those do not suffer; no problems of residency, children education, medical treatment, or any financial crisis. Those say that Iraq is well and going in the right direction, they love Bush and Blair, seeing them as their model in life…
    I met a number of those people, finding them like parrots who repeat the same talk, and there isn’t an atom of pity or mercy in their hearts towards the poor Iraqis, because for them, life is just a chance, and their chance is now, while the rest are weak fools who do not know how to manage their lives, and so deserve what befalls them…
    It seems that the multitude of money blinds the hearts and the eyes…
    I don’t know, but I feel disgust and aversion towards them, I feel they are like insects that suck the blood of humans, living for themselves without thinking of others…
    Those people think of nothing but money; how to earn it, how to enlarge their bank balance, not caring whether it was in the right way or the wrong, legitimately or illegitimately, for them; these are chances not be missed, and the people who live by the principals, according to them, are just naïve people, living in a non-realistic world…
    The other faction of the Iraqis are the poor majority, those who suffered all the disasters of Iraq; they suffered the past wars, they suffered from the blockade, and from this last war. They lost the taste of settlement and comfort, and are still waiting for conditions to improve in Iraq. These people love Iraq, and find no meaning to life without it, or away from it…
    These people’s lives are threatened every day in a random way since the beginning of the war till now, they either lost a family member, or were exposed to kidnapping, threats, displacement, or were forced to travel and leave their houses…
    These are the victims whose voices no one hears, and whose complains no one heeds…
    And they are the majority of the Iraqi people…
    These people reject the idea of Sunnie-Shia’at, because they are a mixture of this and that…
    But those who approved of the war, who walked in the procession of Bush and his administration, agree to the marketing of the Sunnie-Shia’at story, for political purposes and financial gains, and these can be achieved if the sectarian federalism was applied, a federalism that will fulfill their interests, they work in the government, they have their parties, and their parties have sectarian militias that ravage corruption in Iraq, whose victims are the poor Sunnie – Shia’at Iraqi people; they kill, kidnap, and bomb, to force the Iraqi people to accept the idea of dividing Iraq, and thus they drive Bush’s project in the new Iraq…

She has some horrendous narratives that arriving Iraqi doctors have told her, about violence in the heart of the hospitals…
She writes,

    Violence feeds more violence…
    Iraq needs diplomacy in dealing with events, the national reconciliation needs diplomacy, hearing the other party’s opinion, while stubbornness and stupidity are reasons to destroy Iraq and rip it apart…
    And the leader of this stubbornness and stupidity is the American administration and its stupid policy in Iraq, since 2003 until now…
    The Iraqis need someone to unify them and collect their hearts, to bring them near each other to discuss common points… the Iraqis need someone to spread the culture of forgiveness among them, to forget the past…
    But this evil American administration divided the Iraqis and provoked them against each other, utilizing the mistakes of the past in the worst possible way…
    And what did it reap but ruin and destruction upon it, and upon these poor Iraqi people…
    This is the reality of the situation, but Bush eludes, denies, and tricks himself and his people…
    Iraq now is moving in the wrong direction, And this daily violence is the biggest evidence….

She writes:

    Then I met the wife of one of our relatives, whom Saddam deported from Iraq, because he was a Shia’at of Iranian origins, during the war between Iraq and Iran…
    She said- the Intelligence took over the house, my children and I were subjected to hardships, my husbands suffered expatriation as he went to Syria. He was a rich merchant in Iraq, then lived poorly in poverty and died in Syria… she said the Iraqi Intelligence kept chasing her and demanding that she cooperates with them, she lived through tough and frightful days…
    Of course her story made me sad, and I asked her: but are you satisfied with what is happening in Iraq now?
    She said: of course not; when the American tanks entered into southern Iraq where I used to live, I told the people- do not be happy, for Iraq will be destroyed…
    I felt how big is her suffering and sorrow; her husband died away from her, while she was a beautiful young lady, her children deprived of their father, because of Saddam’s regime’s injustice…
    But what can the solution be?
    Shall we amend Saddam’s injustice by shedding the blood of more Iraqis?
    Is throwing off the regime by the intervention of a foreign country the solution?
    Of course the regime in Iraq should have been changed, but not by this dumb foolish way…
    The Iraqis should have been left alone until the appropriate time comes along, to change the leadership they didn’t want; changing from the inside, by the people’s will would have been a mature, balanced and intelligent step, without outside intervention, bloodshed, or ignorant dumb policies that do not comprehend the nature of the Iraqi society and its history, and do not know how to solve its problems in a just way without instigation, spite, and revenge….
    The mistakes of the American policy in Iraq are deadly and cannot be justified… hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died for four years, there is an on-going violence, and not much hope on the horizon…
    Hope is diminishing day after day…
    If Bush does not change his policy in Iraq, withdraw his armies, and leave the occasion to the sincere Iraqi nationalists to take over the decision-making in Iraq, then the daily series of catastrophes and bleeding will keep on… And these sins will continue to be committed everyday in Iraq against a poor nation. Bush is responsible for these crimes in the first place, then every villain, thieve or criminal who encourages him to remain there….
    And at the end, as the Iraqis always say: Nothing goes right but what is right…
    Meaning- Iraq will be liberated, and build its future…
    But when?
    Who can guess for how many years we shall wait?
    Five? Ten? Twenty?
    May God help Iraq, and the Iraqis.

Amen. May God help the Iraqis– but may She/He also help us antiwar Americans to bring our country to its senses, to bring our troops home in an orderly way that is also compassionate to the Iraqis– and to bring a new era of truthfulness, accountability, and compassion into our own nation’s political life.
Thank you, Faiza, for the vivid directness and thoughtfulness of your writing.

Faiza: The story of Husaam

Faiza al-Araji is a courageous, talented Iraqi civil engineer of about my age (mid-50s), also with three grown-up children. Hers are all male; two of mine are daughters. When I had the pleasure and privilege of meeting her– in Boston in summer 2005; and later, more briefly, at a conference in New York City– I found we had so many things in common!
Yesterday, she had a really moving post on her blog “A family in Baghdad.”
Actually, for now, all her family is out of Baghdad. She and her spouse are in Jordan, her sons scattered to the corners of the earth. Well, that makes them representative of the vast number of Iraqis currently living in exile from their homeland, thanks to George W. Bush.
You may find the urological details at the top of the post a little hard to read. (Ouch! Poor Faiza! I hope you’re feeling better now… ) But if they don’t grab your attention, scroll on further down the post for the story of a young man she knows called Husaam.
One of the great things about Faiza’s blogging is the way she puts a human face on what we all know are some really horrible events. Her work is really a great example of what makes bloggging such a revolutionary medium.

Laila El-Haddad in NYC

The talented, engaging, and very knowledgeable Gaza blogger Ms. Laila El-Haddad will be speaking in NYC tomorrow evening (Thursday). The schedule and details are here. She’s apparently doing that speaking tour along with another really interesting and active young woman from Gaza called Fida Qishta.
If you want to learn about the situation in Gaza, this sounds like an excellent opportunity!
(I’m going to be in New York too this week… But not till Saturday. Maybe I can catch Laila in DC next week, instead.)
If any JWN reader gets to the New York event, do send us an account of it– either through the Comments box here or via email, to me.

War-ravaged lives: Baghdad, Michigan

Riverbend is back today with a small serving of her trademark wonderful prose from Baghdad.
She writes:

    The dryness and heat are a stark contrast to the images we see on television of Mississippi and Louisiana. Daily, we watch the havoc Katrina left in its wake and try to determine which are more difficult to bear- man-made catastrophes like wars and occupations, or natural disasters like hurricanes and tsunamis…
    I

Imshin on disengagement

Imshin, the author of the “Not a fish” blog from Israel, has been posting some interesting reflections on the Israeli disengagement from Gaza.
In this Aug 12 post she expresses her support for the rule of law in Israel:

    I am neither orange or blue. I think it is too late for flying colors. It is no longer relevant. My personal view has long been that leaving Gaza was always inevitable, but I did feel that the question of timing was important. There are pros and cons to leaving Gaza at this particular time.
    But what I think is no longer relevant, it has been decided.
    The stand I am taking is in support of the rule of law, in support of the sovereignty of the State of Israel. The decision was made by a democratically elected government with the support of an also democratically elected legislator. The only important question now, in my opinion, is who rules the country