by Jo Wilding

So. Yesterday was Ashura. The whole world knows now that yesterday was Ashura because they saw the bodies on TV. Four of Waleed’s old school friends, now at college, were killed in the Kadhmiya explosions. The taxi driver asked had we heard. Everyone asked had we heard. And all of them said, “This is the Americans. They are trying to make us fight each other.” True or not, perhaps the best hope is that both Shia and Sunni carry on being certain of that and refuse to fight each other.

Ahmed was in Adamiya, the Sunni district next to the Shia area, Kadhmiya, where several of the explosions were. He said lots of people from Adamiya went immediately to give blood at the hospital. He said the western journalists there were the target of rage. The BBC World Service reported that some people blame the Americans for ‘letting’ the bombings happen. It’s stronger than that.

By Dana Visalli
Baghdad, Iraq
Christian Peacemaker Teams

The village of Abu Siffa is every bit as exotic as the name might suggest to the mind of a westerner. It is a small Iraqi farming community resting tranquilly on the banks of the Tigris River, some 50 miles north of Baghdad. The town consists of modest brick and stucco homes scattered almost randomly among citrus groves, all inter-connected by narrow, winding roadways and paths. Inside, the homes are spare and comfortable, with little in the way of furniture, but graced with wall-to-wall carpets and pillows that evoke childhood images from Arabian Nights. Women in black abayas chatter and laugh as they pass along the paths, and flocks of children flit about from field to town. Overall it is an exceptionally bucolic scene, and one suspects that it has changed little in the 5000 years that agriculture has been practiced on this fertile crescent of land along the Tigris.

At 2 AM on the night of December 16, 2003, the people of Abu Sifa were startled awake by the roar of tanks and trucks, humvees and helicopters, as the U.S. Army entered the village. The 4th Infantry Division was paying a house call. Acting on a tip, the Army was trying to catch members of the armed resistance that has been confronting the U.S. military occupation of Iraq. Every house in the village was surrounded, front doors were broken down, and the terrified occupants ordered out into the yards in their nightclothes. All the men present were handcuffed, hooded with plastic bags over their heads, and taken away. Women and children were herded together in the dark night while soldiers ransacked the homes, searching for weapons. Few were found, but $17,000 in Iraq dinars-savings belonging to the villagers-was taken by U.S. soldiers as they rummaged through the villager’s belongings..