The article, "As Iraqis See It" covers the McClatchy bureau in Baghdad, and a blog they run where Iraqis are the content providers, giving a crucial look into their everyday life.
"Inside Iraq" specializes in such stories. The entries on it are rarely edited, and the English is left intact. "You can hear the way they think and speak, untouched," Fadel says. The emphasis, she notes, is on telling personal stories rather than expressing political views. Even so, the blog is full of passion, irony, bitterness, and outrage, qualities that help get across the dark realities—and unfathomable costs—of the occupation with an immediacy that Americans are rarely exposed to. It's the occupation as seen through the eyes of the occupied.
Some of the postings deal with the daily challenges posed by a society suffering a precipitous physical decline. "I just would like to tell you that this is the 7th day that we don't have water in our neighborhood," observes one writer in an April 14, 2007 entry. (It, like many of the contributions, carries no byline—a security precaution.) The lack of water results from the lack of electricity, which is needed to keep the water pumps going. Fortunately, the blogger notes, he can afford the fuel for a private generator. "Yesterday," he writes,
almost all our neighbors came to our house asking for water. We kept our water pump working for hours and we couldn't do anything but providing people with water until 11 pm. I could see happiness and Thanks Allah, my family gained many nice prayers from our neighbors who were really thankful.
An entry from mid-June describes the "vacation" the writer was forced to take as a result of a curfew imposed on Baghdad. "I lived the daily suffering of my family for whole three days," we're informed. Breakfast has to be cooked for everyone at the same time in order to conserve the precious propane gas. Next comes the daily cleaning of the house—turned into an ordeal by the lack of water. There's no electricity, and with the temperature outside 45 degrees centigrade (113 degrees Fahrenheit), the house is suffocating. At 2 PM the electricity comes on for three hours, and the writer takes a bath, followed by a nap with his son:
I just put him between my arms and slept trying to enjoy the moments of having cool air of my room air cooler in spite of the bad smell of the sewage system that flow over.
When the electricity goes off, he reads a book. At 8 PM, when the power returns, the family watches TV, especially the news channels in Iraq, but the blogger sits in another room because he wants to see "a comic movie or a song just to forget for a while the terrible situation of Iraq." Around midnight, when the generator goes off, everyone heads to the roof to sleep because it's too hot inside. "I can say that my three days vacation deserves to be No. 1 worst vacation because I experienced the typical Iraqi day," the post concludes.
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Not all the posts are so morose. Some note with satisfaction that certain parts of Baghdad are reviving as a result of the US troop surge. In a November 10 entry, for instance, a blogger tells of visiting his brother a few blocks away. For more than a year, he writes, his neighborhood, Amil, had been ripped apart by sectarian violence, with some streets abandoned to snipers. But two weeks earlier, with the start of meetings between sheiks representing Sunnis and Shiites, the violence had begun to subside, and on his way to his brother's he walked along some streets
I wouldn't dare to pass a week ago. I also noticed the two cafes on my way open, with great surprise, one of them filled with customers.... I was really happy to see this happens having our traditions and habits come back again.
Recently, a number of similarly hopeful entries have appeared on "Inside Iraq." On December 14, for instance, a blogger noted how
Yesterday morning I made a tour to different areas in Baghdad which I would never think or dream to pass through a year ago.... To my surprise, I saw the highway full with traffic having cars of all kinds even trailers comparing it with the last few months which was almost deserted of all kinds of cars even the military ones. I am really happy to see and feel the security situation becomes better and better.
Such posts are greatly outweighed, however, by those expressing anger and gloom, exasperation and despair. The overwhelming sense is that of a society undergoing a catastrophic breakdown from the never-ending waves of violence, criminality, and brutality inflicted on it by insurgents, militias, jihadis, terrorists, soldiers, policemen, bodyguards, mercenaries, armed gangs, warlords, kidnappers, and everyday thugs. "Inside Iraq" suggests how the relentless and cumulative effects of these vicious crimes have degraded virtually every aspect of the nation's social, economic, professional, and personal life...
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...the United States is not spared on the blog. On the contrary, it is the subject of almost constant comment—most of it negative. Frustration, indignation, resentment, fear—these are the emotions most frequently aroused by the occupation. One major source of grievance are the US military patrols and convoys that are forever hurtling across Baghdad. Motivated by a legitimate fear of car bombs, the Americans insist that while they are on the road, all cars must remain a safe distance away. If anyone gets too close, or makes too sudden a move, the Americans will often open fire. Though rarely mentioned in the US press, such incidents have claimed untold hundreds of Iraqi lives, and the fear of adding to the total is a constant theme of the blog, as in this entry from October 18, about being in a minibus caught in a traffic jam:
During our 10 minutes waiting to pass the intersection, I saw a US army convoy, four Humvee vehicles and two 4wheel drive cars among them. OMG, Not again. Everybody was watching the convoy carefully praying so hard that they pass over peacefully.
While everyone is focused on the convoy in front, a passenger looks in back and sees that another, consisting of four Stryker armored vehicles, is approaching. "Death in front, death behind," he warns, and the passengers, looking behind them, are terrified. When the two convoys pass without incident, they give thanks to Allah. "It was the longest ten minutes I ever lived," the blogger notes.
The whole thing is worth a read - and I think this blog serves a critical function in helping us - living our warm, insulated lives - to understand better (though we could never understand completely) the trials and tribulations of life in Iraq. Something all the hair-splitting and equivocations over the "real" number of dead Iraqis misses by a wide margin.
