Ed Kinane
Voices in The Wilderness
Baghdad
October 17, 2003

Overcast morning. Our first very few drops of rain of the season.

No diary entry yesterday. I was busy adapting three diary entries into an article for the November Peace Newsletter. Since the three came in at a couple hundred words over the 1200 word limit I was given, I had to shave them a bit. Of course that only improved them.

One change in Baghdad since the invasion: more men wearing jeans. I asked Wadah, who these days always wears jeans, about this. When he was our minder last spring he was always dressed in creased slacks. He explains: more men out of work.

Ed Kinane
Voices in The Wilderness
Baghdad
October 14, 2003

PRESS CONFERENCE
Around 11am Ghareeb takes me and Neville to Nejaf., a two-hour drive. Once there it takes us an hour to find the press conference. The site has been moved from the announced location. We park at a traffic barrier in the old city and walk a carless block along an arcaded commercial street, past numerous men with guns, toward the main mosque.

Ghareeb seeks the office of Muktate Al-Sadur’s organization to get access and directions to the press conference. In an alley, Ghareeb is searched by a clot of armed men before being escorted to the office. Two men are detailed to accompany us as we drive to the site, maybe a couple miles away. When we arrive there are numerous men with guns keeping watch, some on neighboring rooftops. No uniformed authorities are present. We don’t have to show any ID or press pass. We are pattted down and wanded before being let through a narrow door into a dwelling. We head upstairs onto a roof packed with journos and cameramen.

Ed Kinane
Voices in The Wilderness
Baghdad
Oct. 13, 2003

No muezzin this morning at 4:30. Neville was set up to record that typical and remarkable chant calling the faithful to prayer. He’s begun using the muezzin’s morning call to prayer as his own.

At 4:50 a chopper hovers overhead before moving on down toward The Palestine. This is the first chopper I’ve seen with navigation lights on. With Abu Mohammed driving, we go by the Hotel Baghdad, recently bombed. Armed men on the roof, armed men strung along Al Sadoon St every few feet. The windows of shops across the boulevard blasted out.

Cynthia Banas
Voices in The Wilderness
Baghdad
October 21, 2003

I read with interest Journalists Battle over Media Coverage of Iraq War (The Gulf Today, 9/11/2003).

As a member of a US American Peace Team, I lived in Baghdad from October 28, 2002-April 26, 2003. I was there during the build-up phase of the war; the bombardment, the invasion, the looting; the “liberation” turned occupation.

Iraq and Sanctions: Myth & Reality

An attempt to dispell key myths put forward by proponents of sanctions policy

(originally published in Iraq Under Siege, South End Press, 2002).