By Ramzi Kysia
Having spent a year in Iraq, I remain continuously startled by the things I see and feel here. Perhaps I shouldn’t still be surprised by the resilience of these people. Perhaps I shouldn’t still wonder at their ability to absorb incredible amounts of suffering and go on with their lives. Or marvel at their determination, in the midst of suffering, to maintain a spirit of hospitality and generosity - with strangers and within their common lives - that is unsurpassed in any of my travels. But I am surprised. I remain in a state of perpetual amazement.

To my shame, I cannot imagine my fellow Americans being able to cope with even a fraction of what Iraqis have had to cope with over the last 30 years. How would America meet brutal dictatorship, 3 terrible wars resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings, the devastating impoverishment and isolation of 13 years of sanctions resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands more, military occupation, massive unemployment, out-of-control crime, and months without electricity or sanitation in 120+ degree heat? September 11 was only a flirting shadow of what Iraqis have experienced, and only time - and our active resistance to the Bush Crusade - will demonstrate if our democracy can manage to survive its aftermath.

People sometimes ask me how I feel about our “failure: the failure of the anti-sanctions movement over long years of struggle, the failure of the anti-war movement over short months of protest. But that question is itself a lie.

It can be overwhelming to stare, wide-eyed, into the crushing weight of a $400 billion-a-year killing machine fed by fear-mongering politicians, headed by a fool, protected by a captive media, only existing to protect an entrenched corporate-capitalist system that is eating our world alive. But if we would wonder at our inability as yet to fully overcome the death sellers and fear merchants, let us also wonder at how hard they have to work to keep their system running.

By Ramzi Kysia

Published in the April/May issue of Left Turn magazine

Have you ever been blessed by a beggar?

Strolling near Baghdad’s Foreign Residence Office is an other-worldly experience. Foreign businessmen rush about to extend their visas at the office. A UN hotel in the neighborhood completes the international presence. “Fancy” restaurants line crumbling sidewalks, catering to the foreigners and what remains of Iraq’s middle class - offering elaborate, multi-course meals at $2 per person. So many faces, so many people, each with their own hopes and their own history. What are they thinking? What do they dream of?

The only face America sees is Saddam Hussein’s. Are we looking hard enough?

By Ramzi Kysia

Baghdad does not know it’s a city under a death sentence.
The sun still shines here. The date palms and poplars still line the Tigris River. The streets are still full of cars, and buses, and taxicabs searching for fares. When night falls, the mosques are full of people praying, and the sidewalks jam with families enjoying the festive Ramadan atmosphere of street vendors, sweets dealers, and restaurateurs roasting chickens in the open air. And with smuggling at an all time high, the shops are full of pretty things to look at - even if most people still can’t afford to buy them.

Walking the streets of Baghdad you notice the architecture - the boarded-up buildings, the crumbling sidewalks. This is what happens after 11 years of economic ruin. But then you also notice the new, box-like structures being built, with huge archways, intricate brickwork, and jutting columns, balconies, and facades. It’s a striking mix of old and new, of socialist sensibility and Babylonian splendor - Frank Lloyd Wright meets Lawrence of Arabia. These buildings are beautiful, and you have to wonder how many of them will be standing in six months if the U.S. does decide to massively bomb this country.

By Ramzi Kysia

Baghdad, Iraq - Dr. Alim Abdul-Hamid’s office at Al-Mustanseriya Medical College in Baghdad is decorated in bright, cheerful colors, but what he has to say is anything but cheerful. Formerly Dean of Basra Medical College, Dr. Abdul-Hamid has had plenty of first hand experience with Iraq’s unprecedented plague of cancers and birth defects.

“We have seen cases of breast cancer among women in their 20s. In their 20s!,” says Dr. Abdul-Hamid. “This is really tragic, because, you know, in America, probably when you come across a case of breast cancer in a woman in her late 30s you would consider that this is a young age for cancer, while we see cases of breast cancer in the 20s. There are increased incidences of colon cancer, thyroid cancer, in addition to, of course, leukemias and lymphomas.”

By Ramzi Kysia

THE DRIVE from Basra to Safwan, Iraq, is eerily apocalyptic. In the Demilitarised Zone, the Iraqi desert is an odd mix of greenhouse farms competing for space with decrepit and bombed-out concrete factories and mills. To the east run a series of rebuilt plastics factories whose stackfires bellow acrid, black smoke over the whole landscape. Burned, rusting cars dot the sides of the road on this, the northern tip of the infamous “highway of death”. This is the road along which the US massacred thousands of retreating Iraqi soldiers after an armistice had been signed at the end of “Desert Storm”.

A stone’s throw from the Kuwaiti border, Safwan was once a large farming town that traded with the whole Gulf. Today, the sight of strangers is enough to bring out seemingly every child for miles around to chase after our car and beg for money. Throughout Iraq, war and drought and sanctions have resulted in a 30 per cent drop in crop production. After the destruction of Iraq’s vaccine facilities by UN weapons inspectors, hoof and mouth disease ran rampant, killing over 1 million cattle.