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The Hanoudi Letter: My Diary |
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Tuesday, 25 July 2006 |
I have always been greatly fascinated by personal diaries whether of the great or the humble, a journal to which one can entrust his inner thoughts, his/her experiences , the ups and downs were one is assured of privacy away from jaundiced eyes and unfair critics. During my years in the service of the government which extended for 33 years, I never had a chance to write a diary. My days were long and exhausting which included clinical work, teaching and occasional shots at administration, all of which left time for a luxury like a diary. At the time of Saddam’s adventure in Kuwait I have already been in retirement when I started working on a book on the dictator and his regime and started a diary at that time we were led to believe by the senior Bush that after kicking Saddam out of Kuwait the alliance which was led by the Americans will move on to Baghdad and finish with Saddam’s tyranny once and for all. But we were actually denied that opportunity because when the American led forces were only 200 km South of Baghdad, the ex-president called a halt to the advance and offered Saddam a cease fire which gave Saddam another 13 years on the top which were bloody and murderous and a lot of Iraqis suffered even worse fates than those during the previous years. One of the victims of those terrible years was my diary.
In 2000 we had the younger Bush who was talking from the earlier days of his presidency about the need for a regime change in Iraq, Saddam has become an absolute tyrant and was destroying his country and his own people and has grown into a very serious threat to the world's security through his massive arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. A very important member of the axis of evil so we had to go and the Bush administration started to hatch a plan for his removal which finally culminated in what they called “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” which was to free us from the dreadful dictatorship and help us in the rebuilding of our devastated country and rejuvenate our moribund institution and infrastructure. None of those promises were realized, what we got was an occupation with the civil administration of the country handed to an obscure ex-ambassador who was until very recently working in the Kissinger consultancy in New York who presided over a greedy, corrupt and inefficient regime which encouraged an increasingly lethal opposition to the American position which resulted in the current messy situation in the country. I am sure the whole world is familiar with, insecurity death and destruction an ending agony which affected almost all the Iraqis and one of its most agonized victims were my son and my family. My eldest son Nazar who was 37 years on the 29th of March 2004 was senselessly and brutally shot by a terrified trigger happy American soldier, the facts about the incidence and the circumstances under which it happened have never been explained to us by anybody. My son was severely injured and underwent a series of unsuccessful operations with many complication which led to a very serious brain damage which left in an advanced vegetative state for which we were compensated by the Americans with the very generous sum of $10,000 (US).
For almost a year now, I was living in Amman, Jordan. At this time last year, the situation in this country has degenerated into an unbelievable mess and our unfortunate son was getting in spite of his bad condition or because of it was becoming increasingly restless and agitated so we were forced to move him to Amman for a better medical care which was practically useless in spite of some minor benefits. There was no better medicine and the little medical care we got there was costing us a fortune, Jordanian medicine is inhumanely expensive. We couldn't afford a hospital, so we started to take care of the injured boy who still needs a 24 hours a day observation and attendance to the needs required by his condition by ourselves, his mother, his sister who had to move with her family to Amman and myself taking shifts during the 4 hours which mine starts from 2 AM to 9 AM. Toward the end of last year in Amman, I was beginning to have some very serious medical problems necessitated a lot of tests and medical investigations and because of my very bad experience with the Jordanian medicine I hurried back home to have them done here in spite of the extremely worrying situation there. I was trying to look at the larger picture because what was happening I very strongly believe that whatever is going to happen to this country will be very significant and historical and is very much worth observing its evolution in spite of the very serious risks one is facing everyday, which is forcing thousands of professionals and whole families to flee the country. I have also been encouraged to stay since I had an opportunity to do some private ophthalmology which is bringing a bit of greatly needed cash, the $240 (US) which I am receiving from the government as a pension after 3 decades of service are not lasting for a very long time.
During the last few weeks I was becoming increasingly evident that we were going to have in the Middle East which I called the boiling cauldron an abnormally hot Summer, politically, the situation in the occupied territories with arrival of the Hamas government was becoming increasingly tense vis-vis Israel. Syria was under intense pressure because of its suspected role in the assassination of the previous Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri and the standoff between Iran and the international community over its nuclear ambitions that was not showing any signs of resolution. I was actually contemplating an update to my blog which I was calling the Middle East: the boiling cauldron, but very attention grabbing and extremely interesting material which I had recently acquired on the relationship between vice president Cheney and Halliburton compelled me to change my mind and write last month’s update about that relationship. My hunches about the boiling cauldron seems to have been justified, three weeks ago Hamas attacked an important check point on the border between Gaza and Israel and captured a young Israeli soldier and started to demand the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoner before releasing him. Israel refused the Palestinian’s demands and retaliated by going into Gaza which it has evacuated almost a year ago and arrested most of the members of the Hamas cabinet and dozens of newly elected members of parliament and before the dust has settled in Gaza. Hezbollah attacked in southern Lebanon killed four Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two. That's when hell broke loose on the 11th Israel declared war on Hezbollah and the Lebanese government which it accused of responsibility for the attacks and declared war and started a campaign of terrifyingly severe bombardment on Lebanon demanding the release of its soldiers and the removal of Hezbollah from the south. This is probably only the beginning, the Israelis are now talking about their own version of the axis of evil which includes Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran.
Today, twelve days since the start of the war between Israel and Hezbollah it is becoming increasingly evident that the conflict is about much more than the two kidnapped soldiers. Israel wants to finish Hezbollah and the constant dangers it has been posing to its northern borders which during the last two years were reaching much deeper inside Israel, a fact which was very clearly demonstrated during the last few days with rockets reaching 50 km inside the Jewish state -- reaching cities like Haifa. The Israelis are determined that after ending the military power of Hezbollah, they want to create a non-militarized zone in southern Lebanon that extends to the southern bank of the Litany River which would be manned by either the Lebanese army or some kind of an international military force preferably that of NATO.
The war is in its second week and the quarrel with Hezbollah might need two or three more weeks to settle. After the Israelis have dealt with Hezbollah, they are going to turn their attention to Syria and Iran. Syria and Iran are faced with very significant demands, Syria should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Lebanon and stop arming Hezbollah and stop the delivery of the advanced weapons which are reaching it from Iran. Also, Iran should listen to the demands of the international community regarding its nuclear ambitions. If these two are going to play, things might settle down at least for sometime, but if they are going to persist with their own agendas the temperature in the cauldron might reach very high levels and exploding with consequences that are very difficult to predict or imagine. The hot summer is still in its infancy and the next few weeks are full of surprises. For these reasons and on the strength of an advice from one of my best American friends a well known broadcaster and an eminent writer, I received two weeks ago a small notebook were I am jotting few lines every day, a new diary.
Najeeb Hanoudi
Sunday July 23, 2006
Baghdad, Iraq
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