Ed Kinane
Voices in The Wilderness
Baghdad
September 28, 2003

CHOPPERS

Around 10:00pm last night US military helicopters started buzzing around this part of town (and other parts for all we know). They kept at it till about 11:30pm. Except for a brief interlude the buzzing was incessant. It often seemed like the choppers were passing within 200 yards of our roof.

Our roof is even with our third story (We can’t access the roof over our third floor). We’re more or less surrounded by taller buildings so our window on the sky isn’t that wide. The choppers fly so low and come on so quickly with no warning that it was hard to know how many were in the air at any one time: Three? Four? Five?

It was menacing. We didn’t know what was going on. I pictured air-borne snipers searching for targets. However, I didn’t see them using spotlights (as occasionally happens back home when police choppers are searching our neighborhood).

Was there some threat to the Palestine Hotel complex? Is the CPA getting even more nervous? A mortar was launched at its Hotel Rashid complex a day or two ago. That’s hitting pretty close to home. Our own Representative Jim Walsh, Republican Chair of a House Appropriations Committee from Central New York, is here for five days with a Congressional delegation. Maybe the CPA has set up some chopper rides for delegation members to give them a taste of the war here.

A recent Syracuse Post-Standard article about Jim’s visit quotes him: “What we’re trying to do is get Iraq’s oil production up so they can pay for some of the cost.” Presumably Jim is referring to the cost of the occupation and reconstruction. Such costs ought to come out of the Pentagon’s hide. The US military, not the Iraqi people, are responsible for the invasion and the destruction. Why on earth should the Iraqis, the victims, have to pay? If they do, it’ll be because of the gun at their head.

RICK & MARY
Cathy and I go over to Rick and Mary’s this morning hoping to find them in. We want their take on what seems to us to be the increased tension in the air. They tell us that yesterday their neighbor two doors down, a contractor, ran into a couple of men outside his house; they told him they were looking for masonry work. As it turned out the neighbor could use a couple of masons on a job he has. He offers to give them a lift to the job site.

En route, they each pull guns and demand his car. He turns it over to them and is released unscathed. This summer a man on the same block wasn’t so lucky. He resisted a car-jacking, got shot in the leg, and lost his car. In Iraq these days it isn’t unusual to see cars without license plates. Since the invasion there’s been no way to register one’s car…regardless of how it was acquired.

In Baghdad there are now four groups, Voices, AFSC, Christian Peacemakers Team, and the Mennonite Central Committee, having a more or less common progressive agenda. None of the four fit the NGO mould. Rick suggests that, given the security situation, it might be useful for the groups to get together to discuss security; this could include developing a possible exit strategy. Rick and Mary agree to host such a meeting at 1pm next Sunday.

CPT
Next we pop in on the Christian Peacemakers Team. The CPT first floor apartment is in a building with several other international groups. The CPT team now consists of David Milne, LeAnne Clausen and Matthew. CPT veteran Sister Anne Montgomery is due to return soon. CPT folks are out and about a great deal. They are just back from Ar Ramadi and Fallujah. In Fallujah the mayor and police chief are former Ba’athists, a problem for locals who seek some sort of accountability in the face of the military and other predators. Matthew is just back from a US-run prison camp near Al Kasr south of Basrah. He went on behalf of a family whose three sons are being detained by the CPA. On the way home last night at around 10:30, Matthew’s car was stopped and searched by soldiers. Fortunately there were English speakers in the car. The soldiers were rude, shouting directions in English and waving directions ambiguously. For Iraqis who don’t understand English, it could have evolved into a dicey situation.

NEW YORK TIMES INTERVIEW
After a frustrating 15 minutes at the internet, the power goes out and I lose the text of my e-mail to Ann. We head home. There we find David Reiff of the New York Times [d_rieff@yahoo.com] and his Finnish cameraman, Ilkka Uimonen talking with the guys downstairs at the Al Muajaha newspaper and waiting for us. One of the advantages of our joint tenancy is that one visit can include both groups. Two birds.

David became aware of us through the Voices website. We spend maybe an hour talking and arguing with him. When he says something about Iraqis being warped I let him have it. It reminds me of the recent NYT article about Baghdad drivers and road rage; in our experience a marked misrepresentation.

David, who has lots of beltway contacts, takes a rather more benign view of the US Government and military than we do. He asks what we think of the speculation by some Iraqis that the US was behind the UN bombings. When I say, “Well, it’s a possibility to look into,” he seems shocked. When I mention things like what the university administrator told me yesterday about believing the US encouraged looting so TV news would show Iraqis in a bad light, he says I’m talking conspiracy theory. As if the US military is incapable of strategizing.

I recommend Milan Rai’s Regime Unchanged to him. We part amicably. Maybe we’ll see him again. I suggest he come back when he has an argument deficit. David says he’d like to and gives me his email address.

JUSTIN
When David leaves, we find Justin Alexander in the kitchen. Justin, who is very young looking, is just in from England and will be in Iraq for two or three weeks. He says that he has worked with the British Voices in the Wilderness for several years. He’s here now specifically to focus on the issue of Iraq’s foreign debt.

Justin will be doing a survey for Jubilee Iraq, a network of individuals and organizations in Iraq and over a dozen of the creditor countries. (www.jubileeiraq.org, +44 7813 137171, mail@jubileeiraq.org)

If one compares the total of debt and reparations, around $200bn, to Iraq’s GDP, $32bn in 2000, and export earnings, $15bn in 2002, then it becomes clear that Iraq is the world’s most heavily indebted country [relatively or absolutely?] by a wide margin. Moreover, it is a country with urgent relief and reconstruction needs (estimates range from $100-600bn).

The flyer goes on to discuss odious debts. Odious debts are the personal debts of a particular regime. They are contracted without the consent of the people and are not spent in their interests. The vast majority of Saddam’s debts fall clearly within this category since he presided over a period in which the Iraqi people were decimated and impoverished while huge sums were pilfered by the Ba’ath leadership and spent on the military and state oppression. All the creditors were well aware of what was happening with loans they were providing.