Editor's
Note:
Editing this publication involves choice. We all filter
information...and when you are responsible for
disseminating articles and news to an audience, it
presents a responsibility. Each night, network
television news executives must make choices as to what
stories you will see- what slant those stories will have
- what images to put on the screen.
At Viewpoint, we try to bring another face to events in
the Middle East. We are trying to give a new slant to
the issues than what you will see in the NY Times, CNN,
or Fox News. Today, we have an on-the-ground reporter,
Robert Fisk, who gives us his view of Iraq. He has been
covering the Middle East for more than thirty years. You
will not see his viewpoint on Hardball or the Boston
Globe.
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Same Old Iraq - by Robert Fisk
BAGHDAD. Each time I return to Iraq, it's the same, like
finding a razor blade in a bar of chocolate. The moment
you start to believe that "New Iraq" might work - just -
you get the proof that it's the same old Iraq, just a
little tiny bit worse than it was last month.
At the border yesterday morning it was all smiles.
Passport formalities would be over in minutes. But $ 10
(pounds 5.40) would help. It did. That's what we used to
do under Saddam - they are the same Iraqi officials,
just not up to their previous standards of venality -
but soon, no doubt, we'll be up to $ 15, or more.
The bombed road bridge on the Baghdad highway has been
repaired - despite the murder of the owner of the
company rebuilding it five weeks ago. There's a
three-mile convoy of new American troops humming
westwards along the motorway - you can tell the new
units because their Humvees and armour are forest green;
the invasion tanks are in desert yellow - and all seems
well until we stop to chat to the sheikh of the little
mosque by the last petrol station before Ramadi. He says
there are three "Ali Baba" cars waiting. They crashed
into a civilian car and sent it spinning off the highway
into the desert. We drive on at 110mph.
The radio - BBC Arabic service, Iranian radio in Arabic,
anything rather than the one run by the occupation
authorities - announces a settlement with Grand
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani over the constitution that's
supposed to be signed this morning. Iraq's leading Shia
cleric doesn't want the Kurds to have a veto over the
permanent constitution and wants more Shias on a
five-person council.
Then a Shia on the Governing Council - where everyone is
handpicked by the Americans - speaks those words that
always fill me with dread in the Middle East because
they always turn out to be wrong. "We have reached an
agreement," he said. "There is going to be very good
news very soon." Well, we shall see.
Baghdad is yellow and grey under a fierce wind and, with
sinking heart, I see more walls. The massive concrete
ramparts around Paul Bremer's consular headquarters, the
hotels of westerners, of the Governing Council, of every
American barracks are familiar.
Now government ministries are to be hidden behind
concrete. And woe betide those Iraqis who work for the
Americans as translators and fail to heed warnings about
"collaboration". Three of them ignored the threat. One,
a Christian, was shot dead in her car in the Zeyouna
quarter, a second wounded with her, their driver also
was shot dead.
I arrive at my dingy hotel and find that yet another
translator is dead. He worked for an American newspaper
and was driving home with his mother and two-year-old
daughter when gunmen with silencers shot all three of
them. There's a rumour that this was a revenge killing.
So while we are outraged, we all secretly and cruelly
hope it's revenge, not a collaborator killing, that has
contaminated our hotel.
I lean over my balcony and watch four miserable Iraqis
from the Civil Defence patrolling the road below. One of
them is lame. The last man, the lame one, is walking
backwards and staring at the rooftops.
Groceries in Karrada Kharaj, to a vast emporium crammed
with the new Iraqi rich, middle class; the poor can't
afford this place. There is fresh Danish butter,
Austrian fruit juice, Perrier by the gallon. And then
there are the cigars. Churchills at a quarter of the
price of a European duty free, Cohibas at less than a
third of their cost. Are these part of the untaxed
imports with which the occupation authorities are trying
to encourage the economy? Or part of the loot from
Saddam's stores?
In the evening, gunfire ripples across Jadriya, near the
university - I hear it away as I write - and two
American helicopters are thundering up in the darkness.
I listen to this unreported battle, glad I didn't buy a
bar of chocolate.
At least 10 rockets exploded last night near the Baghdad
headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority.
There were no reports of casualties. The Katyusha
rockets were fired towards the Convention Centre and the
al-Rashid Hotel. The vehicle from which the rockets were
fired blew up. |