By Anna Bachmann
Voices in the Wilderness

Friday, July 16, 2004

The morning promised to be a hot one and I was already having problems. People were having couldn’t find the drop off location. It’d spent two months trying to get this boat trip on the Tigris River ready and no one could find where it started. So I went up on the bridge and stood around like some hopelessly lost Westerner, a stranger in a strange land. Everyone gaped at me and honked their horns but it was better then any signed that read “Tigris River Project, Turn here!”

Finally everyone (or nearly everyone) had arrived. I had three staff from the Ministry of Environment’s Baghdad Office ready to take their first samples of Tigris River water since the war. I had representatives from three different Iraqi Environmental NGOs (aka. Non-Government Organizations): The Iraqi Green Peace Organization, the Iraqi Human Rights Association and the Green Iraq Organization. And I had reporters, photographers, and camera operators from major Arabic and Western Press who had come to document the first environmental survey of the river (there had been a previous attempt in March, which had ended badly with the Ministry engineers being shot at, dragged ashore, hooded and cuffed, interrogated, with their work of three days destroyed).

The goals of the trip were to help the Ministry conduct its survey; give the Iraqi Environmental groups some much needed exposure, and allow Iraqis a chance to travel down their own river (hopefully) unmolested. But there were a whole host of problems with this idea. First off the river is dotted with American/Coalition obstacles … Adhamiyah Palace military base, the Green Zone and the 14th of July Bridge. Special permission would be needed to travel past them. Secondly there was the problem of approaching sensitive installations like Water Treatment facilities to take samples … I faces hassles with security guards at numerous sites on all of the pre-surveys I had done prior to the final trip (usually these ended amicably but once there was a few particularly tense moments when I could hear quite clearly hear bullets being loaded into chambers). Then there was the resistance to consider, particularly on the lower river, which is filled with farms and has an isolated feel to it … a perfect place for insurgents to hide and strike from.

By Anna Bachmann
Voices in the Wilderness

The following is the best, most comprehensive, most complete (but maybe not exactly the last word) list of my people for the trip on Sunday that I sent to the Iraqi Police and US Military (I’ve removed part or all of their names in the list below). At the last second CNN was begging me to come to, but I was cruel to them and told them that unless they could find room in the police boat they were out of luck (hah, never thought I’d be in a position of saying ‘No’ to a major network!) … anyway, I guess they sweet talked the Iraqi Police into it. Cause I got the call that they were coming too.

Lastly, because the press came out in droves for this project (yippee) we’ve decided to end it with a press conference. I found this big house owned by Sheik Ayad Jamal Al-Din on the river in Jadriyah with a Mudhif (a traditional Arab house) in the back yard. That will be our drop off point and the location of the press conference, and then our boats (now empty) will return up-river.

By Anna Bachmann
Voices in the Wilderness

So, got some questions for you (other inquiring minds want to know as well). What was the condition of water treatment effort under the Hussein rule? Has it worsened since the war/because of the war? In what ways? Was the water treatment ever good in Baghdad? The fisherman you qoted said fishing has not been good in years…What is the difference now vs. then?

It would be interesting to hear more on this subject. I know you have provided us with some figures on waste treatment, and river usage, but putting it all together with some historical information would put a frame around the picture, at least for me.

In any case, wear your sunscreen!

Good questions … let’s see. The areas around Baghdad before the 1940’s was primarily used for Agriculture and irrigation which has a very LONG history in Iraq was the only major impact on the river. After the 40’s, urbanization began … The original city, located between the A’aima Bridge and the Sinik Bridge (on both sides of the river but more on the Rusafa side), started to expand. Other city centers started in Doura, New Baghdad, etc. The biggest expansion started during the era of the Republic. Sadr City (also known as Thawra and, during Saddam’s time, Saddam City) was and still is the poor part of town. During the Qassim government, the old shacks and mud houses were replaced with new government built housing for the poor (Shu’ala City on the Khark side of the river was built around the same time and has similar architecture I’m told). Important changes began when Turkey put in it’s dams on the upper river … there are 13 dams in Turkey that effect both the Tigris and Euphrates. During Saddam’s time, there was also some major dam building inside if Iraq. There are eight dams affecting the Tigris in Iraq. Historically the dams were for irragation, but they also were for providing electricity, flood control and storing water. Even with all the changes, the water level remained fairly constant through the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s. But the dam building of the 70’s & 80’s started to have major effects. I’ve been told that the dam in Turkey cut the water to Iraq by half … but I don’t have detailed info on that.

By Anna Bachmann
Voices in the Wilderness

As the Saddam’s first court appearance played on the BBC with commentary from the British newscaster, I was in a hotel room with an Iraqi woman named Alaa and two American journalists eating lunch. The journalists, between bites of kabob and lamb tikka, spoke very much like the newscaster on the television of the various reactions that the first footage of Saddam since his capture would take in Iraq. I just watched the woman’s face.

She watched the images of Saddam on the television intently for awhile. His words were reported in bits and peices by the female newscaster as Iraqi censors had cut the sound from the footage. I wondered what she could be thinking. She had grown up watching this man on television … Saddam Hussain, the President of Iraq (which is how he introduced himself at the trial we are told) … had been a figure of the utmost authority in this woman’s world for her entire life. This man had evoked fear, hatred, admiration, … any number of mixed and divergent reactions in the people of Iraq. Now look at him.

Earlier we were told that Saddam had said he had invaded Kuwait for “the Iraqi people.”

“That’s right,” Alaa said without hesitation, “For his family and his relatives.” Those Iraqi people.

She watched him on television now, focused but without expression. Then she furrowed her brow for a brief moment and turned away to eat her lunch. There was nothing there anymore that could hold her attention.

By Anna Bachmann
Voices in the Wilderness

I had a good meeting today and a bad one.

I’ve been seeing posters around town that have been put up the a group called the Iraqi Free Observers … the one that caught my attention was a poster about the concrete blast walls that are everywhere around town. Each section of these walls costs between $800 and $1200 … The group estimated that there are over 230 of these sections set up around a typical building in Iraq. That’s a lot of dough being spent on something like concrete and rebar. The poster started by saying “Concrete Shield … Until When? … An Actual Obstacle in the Face of Reconstructing Iraq”… I saw the poster right after speaking to an advisor to the Ministry of Agriculture who had told me pretty much the same thing, but I wasn’t sure if I should believe him or not. When I saw the groups poster, I knew I had to talk to them.

I sat down with three members of the group today and was not disappointed … they are a group of young professionals from a wide variety of fields. They’ve formed a kind of watchdog group and have put out three posters so far, using only their own resources. One concerned the blast walls I just mentioned. Another, featuring colorful graphics, focused on the take over by the American Military of an island on the Tigris that was an amusement park. It stated “Where are Iraqi’s Children Playing in Holiday!?” The third poster featured bomb-carrying, cartoon terrorists entering Iraq and pointed to the lack of secure borders which had led to an increase in the drug trade and smuggling, the spread of Aids, the importation of expired foods, and the deaths of innocent people because of terrorism.