Text 13884, 86 rader
Skriven 2005-07-01 16:08:00 av Alan Hess
Ärende: Iraqi reality doesn't match speech
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http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bal-op.rubin01jul01,1,2459466.story?c
oll=bal-pe-opinion
Harsh reality for Iraqi people tough to square with president's speech


By Trudy Rubin

July 1, 2005

BAGHDAD - It's hard to juxtapose President Bush's speech on Iraq on Tuesday
with the realities in Baghdad.

I've found the security situation worse than on my previous visit in January.
The ray of hope provided by Iraqi elections has waned. Iraqis go to work, shop,
take university exams, but their daily lives are defined by the violence of an
insurgency that doesn't end.

More than two years after Baghdad fell, my plane still had to make a dizzying
corkscrew landing to avoid a potential missile. Neither U.S. nor Iraqi troops
have figured out how to protect the 10 miles of road from the airport to the
city center.

My driver sped along the six-lane road, which is flanked by bungalows and palm
trees of Sunni residential neighborhoods known to harbor insurgents. Cars
sometimes come hurtling out of side streets, their occupants firing on convoys.

Iraqis have developed rules of defensive driving.

Rule No. 1: Never drive too close to military or civilian convoys because you
might get incinerated if a car bomber attacks. Or some jittery shooter in the
convoy might kill you by mistake. When we see a military convoy, my driver
brakes and proceeds very slowly to avoid coming close.

Rule No. 2: Vary your route if you think someone might want to kidnap or kill
you. Likely victims include anyone with money, Iraqi Christians, academics,
doctors, anyone involved in politics, clerics, Iraqi police or Iraqi military
and anyone working with Americans, journalists and foreigners.

Of the many Iraqis I know, there isn't one whose friends or family haven't been
touched by postwar violence.

Violence also helps produce the next-most-oppressive factor in Iraqis' lives:
the lack of electricity, which in Baghdad is two hours on, four hours off. The
national electricity grid's average daily output is still falling below prewar
levels because of degraded infrastructure, poor U.S. planning for the postwar
and sabotage.

The rich can afford generators. The middle class buys small generators for $200
that power a fan and a couple of light bulbs. But many ordinary Baghdadis have
no air conditioning, fans, refrigeration, elevators, lights or water, which
depends on electricity for pumps. And they have no television to distract them
from their troubles.

A driver I know named Amer described how his family copes: The men sleep on the
roof (women can't because it's too exposed). They buy ice for the refrigerator,
use candles and store water in barrels and try to distract the children in the
dark.

I thought of Amer as I listened to President Bush say we must stand firm
because "Iraq is a central front in the war on terror." The sad truth is that
Iraq became a mecca for foreign terrorists after the war because of a lack of
U.S. planning for the postwar and huge mistakes during the occupation.

The Iraqi people are paying for those mistakes - for the U.S. failure to
establish postwar order, which let an insurgency grow, and for the disbanding
of the old Iraqi army, which left the Iraqis with no means of defense. The
administration also failed to fashion a policy to woo alienated Sunnis, who
make up the bulk of those attacking U.S. soldiers.

It will be years at best before the new Iraqi army is capable of securing the
country. Only a political process that brings Sunnis into the government stands
a chance of undercutting the insurgency. The prognosis for this process is
uncertain.

But until Iraqis reach a formula for domestic peace, any swift American pullout
would plunge Iraq into even worse chaos. "God help the Iraqis if America pulls
out too soon," one Iraqi told me. "But God help the Americans if they stay in
Iraq."

Trudy Rubin is a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Her column appears
Tuesdays and Fridays in The Sun.

Copyright + 2005, The Baltimore Sun

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