Letter from Baghdad

[DuctapeFatwa]

Dr. Glen Rangwala, lecturer in politics at Newnham and Trinity Colleges, Cambridge University, writes from occupied Baghdad on life in Iraq under America's rule.....

I have yet to meet an Iraqi in Baghdad who thinks that the occupation is going well. Everyone talks about the lack of security, and most speak of how their neighbours or relatives have been kidnapped, robbed in the street, attacked, or have refused to leave their homes for weeks on end. One elderly Iraqi man asked me what freedom is there when you can't even go outside for fear of (and here he gesticulated) having your throat slit? The eruption of crime that followed the invasion, praised by the soon-to-depart Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon as a "form of redistribution", seems to have affected the poor disproportionately: it has been people from the non-professional sector who have given me the most serious accounts of violence in their communities.

The economic situation for most Iraqis remains dire. The Coalition Provisional Authority - the US-led body that attempts to run modern Iraq - has acknowledged that 60%of the population of working age is unemployed. The UN World Food Programme is shortly to release the results of a survey that will show that three-quarters of the population would be left without adequate food supplies if not for the ration system instituted under the rule of Saddam Hussein. Despite the second largest oil reserves in the world, Iraq is now reliant upon oil imports from four neighbouring states just to meet the basic needs of its population. The talk of the "economic miracle" that would accompany the creation of a "new Iraq" has long been forgotten, with the attention of US troops, Iraqis and maybe even British politicians focused on just surviving the next day.

The prospects for a democratic, prosperous and pro-Western Iraq - the goal proclaimed by US Secretary of State Colin Powell on his lightning visit to Iraq in mid-September - do not look good....

http://www.arabmediawatch.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=796