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	Report-56: There’s no Explosions / message from Baghdad

There's no explosions: it's not an important area

Traffic, security, freedom and justice in Thawra

By Andréa Schmidt for the Iraq Solidarity Project

March 29 2004

Occupied Baghdad

Sadr City is a massive subdivision tacked on to the North end of Baghdad.

It is home to 2 million of Baghdad's 5 million residents. It is a Shia

area, and mostly very poor.

During the regime era, the area was known as Saddam City and was strictly

off limits to foreigners. Shia were kept out of universities and

government jobs throughout the 80s and 90s - a silent freeze-out of the

majority of Iraqis through which Saddam sought to divide Sunni and Shia

and shore up his control. Many were isolated in Saddam City by poverty,

and by the Mukhabarat.

Now, after the war, it has been re-named after Sayyid Mohammed Sadiq

Al-Sadr, who used to preach against the US and 'Satan,' the name for

Saddam that everyone here understood. Not surprisingly, in 1999 he became

one of many Shia religious leaders to be assassinated by Saddam's regime.

But many residents still refer to the area as Thawra, a name that predates

the occupation, the war and Saddam -- Thawra, which means 'Revolution'.

I talk to some street kids hanging around squares in Baghdad's city

center, hawking electrical wire scavenged and stripped from bombed-out

buildings. They ask me if I'm American and I hastily reply no, I'm

Canadian, then feel sheepish about splitting hairs. I ask them where

they're from. "Thawra," they reply with big smiles and in such a way that

I fully expect them to start flashing hand signs.

That name, "Thawra," is supposed to strike fear in the hearts of

foreigners, who more or less try to avoid the area. Many of our

translators come from well-off, well-educated Sunni backgrounds and have

roughly the same reaction to the idea of spending time outside a car in

Thawra that those of us who grew up in Toronto's Bloor West Village or

North Toronto have toward spending significant amounts of time in Dixon --

a combination of disdain, fear for their safety and incomprehension: "Why

would you want to go there?"

I drive up with Khaled and Ahmed, two young men for whom that's a

non-question, since they've lived there all their lives. We go in the late

afternoon, our windows rolled down to catch the evening breeze as it

rises.

I ask Khaled why everyone is so scared of Sadr City, and why it is

considered so unsafe. "I don't know why they think it's unsafe," he

answers. "Stupid people think this area is crazy or ali baba or something

but when people come to the area they see that this is life. This is

human, this is also human, I think."

Portraits of Mohammed Al-Sadr have replaced the ubiquitous portraits of

Saddam that used to stand on the street corners. There are also pictures

of other religious leaders who were assassinated by the last regime. The

face of Moqtada Al-Sadr, Mohammed's twenty-seven year old son who has a

massive following in the area's mosques, is omnipresent. Moqtada, who

during last Friday's prayer in Kufa, near Najaf, denounced the US-designed

Interim Constitution as "a terrorist law"* and between chants of "No No

Israel, No No America," urged those praying to "seek freedom and democracy

in a way that satisfies God." ** I ask Khaled if people in Thawra like

Moqtada as much as they liked his father. Yes, they do.

There are a lot of sheep and goats, grazing on mounds of garbage on street

corners and vacant lots. And compared to Baghdad City Center, the traffic

is well-regimented. Several men direct it at each intersection. "Who are

they?" I ask. They're Moqtada's men, and men from the Hawza, Khaled

replies. "Why are they directing traffic?" "Because people here like to

help." Indeed. The religious groups have organized not only to direct

traffic, but to take care of security and mosques.

I ask Khaled if there's more freedom here now than before the war. He

refuses to indulge the 'I spoke to one Iraqi and he said' game: "Let's ask

people what they think," he says, "maybe for one person there's more

freedom, maybe someone else feels there's less." So we start by asking

Ahmed, who immediately grows grim: "There's no freedom and no security. I

think Iraqi rights are missing. Simple things like explosions, it's not

safe - there's no rights in my country." He also cites a lack of jobs as a

major problem. Ahmed is self-employed as the driver of a beat up old cab.

We visit a family. Khaled introduces me to Mohamed, one of three brothers

who live in the house along with their wives, ten children and his

mother. His little girl has a devastating skin disease that he has been

told is caused by DU poisoning. He shows me around their almost

completely unfurnished house and says that he has had to sell all the

furnishings to try to buy medicine for her, but it isn't enough. He is

unemployed, and the CPA medical assistance people have not helped him

access the medication. He has contacted the Ministry of Health, but has

received no answer. He is angry: "Now that Saddam is gone, I still don't

have rights. Now I have trouble getting work, I can't get a salary.

Before the war or after the war, we still don't have rights."

I have my mini-disc recorder with me and I want to speak to the women who

have silently accompanied us through the house. I ask Mohamed's wife if

I can interview her. He cuts in: "She doesn't speak well." That means no.

Khaled points out the headquarters of the Badr Army/Organization, which

returned from exile in Iran 'after' the war, and has set up headquarters

in an old Baathist ministry building in Thawra. The Supreme Council for

Islamic Revolution, with which the Badr Organization is affiliated, is a

member of the Interim Governing Council. Next door, occupying another

section of the old regime compound, are a group of squatters who needed

housing and took it. Something about this makes me happy. Something about

the fact that technically speaking, it is illegal to squat old ministry

buildings in Iraq - a CPA order that seems to be enforced rather

selectively in the squatters' camps around town. And here is a GC member

organization and poor people defying the order, side by side in the same

compound.

Apparently US troops don't come through Thawra all that visibly anymore. I

see only one patrol all evening. There's plenty of other men patrolling

the streets with Kalashnikovs though, men doing "grassroots security" duty

for groups of neighbors celebrating Muharram. It is 9 o'clock and there

are tons of people outside. Muharram music is blaring in numerous spots;

a video of a Sheikh preaching is being projected onto an outdoor wall and

people are watching.

Khaled reflects on one of the ironies of the area's continued marginality:

"Before, people, cab drivers, used to be scared of coming here. Now,

people are saying that it is maybe better in Thawra. There's no

explosions, it's not an important area. People here like to help, people

here are friendly really. Yeah, there's problems, but. We hope for peace

and freedom for everyone in Iraq and everyone in the world. We hope for

justice for everyone."

Justice. Watching the fires burning garbage on the street median, and

catching a final glimpse of Sadrs father and son on a billboard as we

leave the area, it's somehow difficult to believe that anyone will be able

to maintain the theory that Thawra isn't an important area for long.

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This report was written by Andréa Schmidt for the Iraq Solidarity Project.

The Iraq Solidarity Project is a Montreal-based grassroots initiative to

provide direct non-violent support to Iraqis struggling against the

occupation; strengthen the mobilization against economic and military

domination and anti-war work in Quebec and Canada; and build links of

solidarity between struggles against the occupation of Iraq and struggles

against oppression in Canada and Quebec.

While in Iraq, Andréa can be reached by email at andrea@tao.ca or

andreaschmidt2004@yahoo.ca or, on rare occasion, by sketchy Iraqna cell

phone: +011 964 079 01 379 573.

To get in touch with the Iraq Solidarity Project in Montreal, email

psi@riseup.net or call (514) 521-5252. To join our listserv and receive

reports from Iraq, send an email to psi-news-subscribe@lists.riseup.net.