Nir Rosen - Aftermath

When Aliya was a child, her legs were paralyzed. No doctor could treat her, so her family took her to a Shiite shrine near Hilla—where, Sadiq explained, she was able to stand and walk. Since that moment she had possessed special powers. “There are two types of magic,” said Sadiq, “the devil’s magic, practiced by some sects in Iraq but which is against the Koran, and merciful magic, which can combat the devil’s magic and which she practiced.”

Aliya was paid for her services, but very little. Traditional healing is very common in Iraq, and since every woman in the neighborhood knew about her (she only treated women), word of her abilities spread. Sadiq maintained that most women in his wife’s field were also security agents or collaborators. The security service wanted Aliya to work with them because she had access to every woman in the city and could discover the secrets of each home, such as who was involved in illegal political activity. Aliya refused to be an agent and was subsequently accused of harboring an anti-Saddam political group in her home. In describing this course of events, Sadiq accused the mayor of being a security agent and Baath Party official.

On August 10, 2002, Aliya was arrested by the Iraqi Security Forces. She was found guilty of witchcraft and spent two months in jail. The order to arrest her came from the national security directorate. The documents said she was released because of her husband’s request. He wrote a letter to the security service saying that she had only been using special spiritual techniques to cure ailments of the soul. She only had treated women and only had used the Koran. Sadiq asked for another chance, promising that Aliya would never practice healing again. He also mentioned that he had been a POW in Iran and had chosen to return to Iraq, unlike other Shiites who had joined Iranian-sponsored anti-Saddam militias.

Although Aliya was sentenced to six months, she was released after seventy days from the Rashas women’s prison (she was transferred from the Al Rusafa prison) in a general amnesty. Aliya had been beaten in the police station, and Sadiq was still bitter. “She is a good wife, and they put her in the same prison with prostitutes,” he complained. “She was so traumatized she has ceased performing her magic.”

After her release Aliya went to the tomb of Abbas, an important Shiite shrine to one of Ali’s sons, and said, “If I am really your relative, prove it by destroying Saddam and all his men within a year.” Six months later, his government fell. Sadiq explained that this happened because “God answered the prayers of those who had suffered.”

I AM OFTEN ASKED now if it was all worth it. Would it have been better to leave Saddam in power? Are Iraqis better or worse off than they were before the American war? I never know what to say. How do you compare different kinds of terror? Those who were spared Saddam’s prisons and executioners may be better off, though they have not been spared the American prisons, or attacks, or the resistance’s bombs, or the death squads of the civil war. The Kurds are certainly better off, on their way to independence, benefiting from their relative stability and improved economy. But the rest of Iraq? Under Saddam the violence came from one source: the regime. Now it has been democratically distributed: death can come from anywhere, at all times, no matter who you are. You can be killed for crossing the street, for going to the market, for driving your car, for having the wrong name, for being in your house, for being a Sunni, for being a Shiite, for being a woman. The American military can kill you in an operation; you can be arrested by militias and disappear in Iraq’s new secret prisons, now run by Shiites; or you can be kidnapped by the resistance or criminal gangs. Americans cannot simply observe the horror of Iraq and shake their heads with wonder, as if it were Rwanda and they had no role. America is responsible for the chaos that began with the invasion and followed with the botched and brutal occupation. Iraq’s people suffered under the American occupation, the civil war, and the new Iraqi government, just as they did under the American-imposed sanctions and bombings before the war and just as they did under the years of Baathist dictatorship.

While the spontaneous burst of repressed fury from one segment of Iraqi society often caused more damage to property than the American bombs, another segment demonstrated solidarity and a volunteer spirit eager to restore security and normalcy. Common civilians stood all day directing traffic in a country with no traffic lights or rules, where there was absolute liberty to drive anywhere, in any direction, at any speed. These volunteers protected neighborhoods and established order, but it was too late. After the war, looters pillaged the country, stripping everything but the paint from the buildings they preyed upon. Under the gaze of U.S. troops, looters destroyed the physical infrastructure of the Baathist state, while the U.S. occupation eliminated its bureaucracy.

The atmosphere of lawlessness that pervaded the country in those first few days and weeks never went away. Eventually it allowed for criminals, gangs, and mafias to take over; it replaced the totalitarian state and the fear it had imposed with complete indifference to the idea of a state. It was a shock from which Iraqis did not recover. In Baghdad the dominant man in any area was called a shaqi . He was normally a thug who would sometimes engage in extortion and other small crimes; after the war these shaqis were recruited into armed groups and even religious militias.

A few weeks after the war against Saddam’s regime ended and before the war against the resistance began, I moved into a house in the Mansour district, where I stayed for a month. I was stringing for Time magazine, but I clashed with my colleagues, who were focused on the English-speaking elite Iraqis, the American military, and the Shiite clerical establishment, but ignored the Iraqi street, the mosques, the Sadrists. At night, to the sound of gunfire and frogs calling, I would sit by the pool and watch bats swoop down to sip water, as I fought loneliness by making calls on the satellite phone to my future wife. Taha was our somnolent guard. He arrived in the afternoon and left in the morning. He had a chair in the driveway, where he sat with his Kalashnikov leaning lazily against the wall. I bought newspapers for him every day because I sympathized with the solitude and ennui of his job, but mostly so that he would remain awake a little longer. He was a sound sleeper. He sat reading the newspapers, or staring in front of him, his head hanging down wearily, and evinced no perceptible reaction when machine gun fire erupted outside our walls, as it did intermittently all night. I grew accustomed to it, but sometimes, when I was sitting on the lawn eating dinner and a burst went off on our street, I still jumped.

Five minutes from the house was a market that sold looted goods and heavy-caliber machine guns, bazookas, grenade launchers, RPGs, handguns, and ammunition. The grenade launcher was fifty dollars. I was inquiring about prices one day when a large burst was fired from right behind me. I leaped high in the air, checking my body for holes. The sellers were demonstrating their merchandise to interested consumers by firing them into the sky.

Not far from the neighborhood I was living in was the Washash district, its narrow streets awash with sewage. Like much of Baghdad, a greenish brown deluge had descended upon the streets, reaching from one side to another. Residents waded through the putrid liquid, and children ran barefoot through it. Women gathered in a loud gaggle, anxious to voice their complaints. There was no electricity, no gas, the water was dirty, and their children were sick. There was shooting all night, and they were afraid to go out. These families, like 60 percent of Iraqis, relied entirely on the state’s food distribution program to survive.