born 1976, political Scientist and freelance journalist
On the 7th of March, parliamentary elections will be held in Iraq. Between the 14th of December, 2009 and the 5th of January, 2010, I traveled around that country commissioned by the ICIP (Institut Catalį Internacional per la Pau). After landing in Basra, I traveled to Rumeitha, Najaf and Baghdad in order to meet with trade unionists, students, teachers, clothes salesmen, a mayor, generals, a blacksmith or the father of a Sunni swimmer who saved seven Shiite pilgrims from drowning in the river Tigris. I decided to ask my questions with no hurry. To eat, drink tea and chat; listening. Without inhibitions. Stories and points of view which were not necessarily the ones I was looking for or the ones I wanted to bring back home. The stories that came my way. Little resistances...
[15/02/2010]
Many of the passengers -and I am no exception- start to anxiously smoke as soon as they are within the Basra Airport, their entry point into Iraq. Others go through the paperwork and the questions of a couple of doctors covered with face masks. They are trying -with dubious efficiency- to carry out the prophylactic measures preventing the spread of the Influenza A virus, hence placing Iraq at the forefront of international medical security in airports...
[15/02/2010]
Early in the morning, the board of the Oil Workers Trade Union meets in the headquarters of the SOC (Southern Oil Company). They are worried about their future and they have called for an emergency meeting. While the country is renovating and conceding oil concessions to foreign companies, a decision approved by the Oil Ministry on the 17th of July, 2007 is ratified. This regulation leaves the trade unions excluded from decisions concerning Iraqi oil. About three weeks ago, President Nuri Al Maliki gave an order affecting all the levels of the administration, forbidding any meeting with them...
[16/02/2010]
Ali Niazi is the head of the Association of Fighting Students of the Basra University. He is 23-years old and he studies Business Administration. He is resolute in his idea that, in a few months, when he graduates, he will try to emigrate to Europe or to the United States. "In order to start working in the Iraq Southern Oil Company you have to pay. An engineer may earn up to 1.800 dollars and the position costs about 20.000 dollars. It is easy to recoup the cost, but who has that kind of money available to bribe some member of the provincial government?...
[17/02/2010]
Military scrapyards. So that nobody forgets the past. Oil and gas burning in the distance, misty, with the greyish, wintery color of December. A wall of rain that you cross and there is no country behind it; just an endless, predictable and eternal succession of military checkpoints of the Iraqi army...
[18/02/2010]
Eight checkpoints in 120 kilometers, the distance separating Rumaitha from Najaf. Not a single question. The police and the Iraqi army in perfect (or apparent) control of the situation despite the fact that the Defense Minister is excluded from the political game and from participating in the next elections (when we are traveling, the decision is later revoked)...
[19/02/2010]
Intissar, a 29 year old woman, is the daughter of Hassan Oleiwi, and she "received" 40 kilos of explosives in the door of her house. She is a militant for women's rights in Najaf, the holy city of the Iraqi Shiites. They tried to intimidate her with anonymous and emphatic calls about what could happen to her in any moment...
[22/02/2010]
Al Saydoun street, in Karrada, with its terraces full of students eating and drinking (juices) could make you think you are in Beirut. For the first time, since traveling from Basra to Baghdad, there are nearly as many women uncovered as covered ones and jeans and trainers are far more numerous than traditional clothes, a majority in the country's south...
[23/02/2010]
The concrete wall surrounding Al Khadamiye is a few meters thick. Like in many other areas in Baghdad, it was built to avoid the entry of external militias. If you cross the street and the railroad track (about 15 meters), you will find another wall, surrounding the neighboring area of Al Hurriya, built with the opposite intention: to avoid the militiamen moving out...
[24/02/2010]
The 14 bodyguards of Quassem Atta, General of the Iraqi Army and spokesmen of the government's security plan for Baghdad, are exhausted. While some of them smoke, the others, without bulletproof vests or helmets, sleep in chairs. The most disciplined watch their boss's live interview on television...
[25/02/2010]
Men beating their heads with swords while they wail and jump rhythmically; children imitating them. Blood gushing out. This is the nearly monolithic vision of the ritual of the first dawn of the Ashura that we have in the West. We have to give color, specially blood red, to the news...
[26/02/2010]
"In Khadamiye we owe a lot to Hussein Al Sadr". Salah Mahdi Al Anbari is the owner of a blacksmith where Sunnites and Shiites work together and he wants to mention him specifically. This cleric, one of the most respected ones in Khadamiye, is responsible, to a large degree, of having kept his area of influence free of the consequences of the sectarian war...
[01/03/2010]
I visit the Fine Arts Academy of the Baghdad University. The size of the theater that is being built there is surprising. Ali Kareem is hoping to perform there before the end of the year. This edifice was built by the British in 1932 and in the 50s it was one of the most avant-garde theaters in Iraq...
[02/03/2010]
Bilal Al Badry tells us how, in his neighborhood, a mad and unkempt tramp walked the streets dragging his feet and collecting garbage without bothering anyone. He received food from the neighbors and he slept in the street corners...
[03/03/2010]
There are two different ways of getting into Irak. The easiest and most common route is flying from Jordan, Beirut or even Vienna or Stockholm, in a direct flight to Erbil, the capital of the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan. If you chose this route, it is not necessary to apply for a visa beforehand...
[04/03/2010]
If we fraction Iraqi reality and try to explain it from a uni-dimensional perspective -or from abroad- we will hardly understand anything. As we plunge among its people and share food and debates, travel and sleep, with people as independent as you can be in this country, we get nearer to understanding an evidence so obvious that we can only state it in order to promote a desired debate...