This piece was intended in the beginning as a short and a personal letter to a very special friend and an extremely missed colleague who has left this country searching for a safer environment and a better future for his children, but when I finished it I found out that it has grown into a hefty and a very detailed dissertation which might be boring to my friend. I have also discovered that in my enthusiasm to write something intelligent I have neglected working on the weekly installment to the hanoudiletter, so I decided that I am going to push it into the web site and write to my friend as soon as the messy situation in this country and the still very serious condition of my son Nazar would permit.
Nazar is very much the same although we think that he is sometimes responding to what we tell him, but he is still totally dependent on the various life saving devices he is provided, but the tracheotomy tube very often gives him sudden paroxysms of coughing which might last up to half an hour with each bout shaking him violently and leaves him very exhausted and extremely tired which is a truly frightening experience. He still needs a 24 hour observation and care which we are still doing ourselves, in his own house in Karada, [the old family house the one in Mansoor is now an inhabitable jungle]. These responsibilities are causing a severe burden both psychologically and financially, we have as you very well know have never been rich and I have not been doing any work all these last months of the tragedy. We have never received any help or support from any local authority or from the so called humanitarian organizations, which are present in this country in the dozens. A few weeks ago, I was interviewed by the BBC World Service about the senseless shooting of my son during which I was pleading for a bit of kindness and support to us and to the hundreds of other Iraqis who have suffered a similar tragedy, but there was not even a single word of understanding or sympathy from anywhere and if it were not for the generous help we are receiving from a small circle of friends and family we would have been in a very serious trouble.
This world has changed into a place of abject indifference to human suffering and pain, nobody cares.
Talking about today’s world reminded me of the amazing events of the last two weeks which centered around George Galloway. Galloway is a Scottish Politician, a former labor member of the British Parliament, he was dismissed from the party and parliament because of persistent accusations against him the gist of which was that he has been one of the most important beneficiaries of the major bribery scheme which was organized by Saddam Hussein which allowed him to buy the loyalties and support of many politicians, journalists, the sons of very high international officials, actresses and female members parliaments of various countries, some major religious and political institutions and many others, a very long list which was very well documented by Charles Duelfer in his first report on the previous Iraqi regime. The currency was what later on became known as the oil coupons, these were vouchers by which the recipient was allowed to remove millions of barrels of Iraqi oil which he in turn would sell it to an interested buyer for a hefty commission. A flagrant prostitution of the oil for food program which was initiated in the mid 1996 by the United Nations in an attempt to ease the burdens of its sanctions which has turned the lives of the Iraqis into a nightmare, but the Iraqis’ benefits from the program were no more than marginal at best. The only beneficiaries of the program were Saddam and his corrupt friends and politicians.
George Galloway denied the accusations and went on to sue the paper which has made them, the London Daily Telegraph for damages, the man was forgotten for sometime until he emerged during the last general elections in Britain as a candidate from a London constituency under the banner of a party which he has established after his dismissal from labor which he called RESPECT !! party, he won the seat by a very small margin and went on during his victory speech to denounce his opponents in a very foul language denying his involvement in the Iraqi dictator’s bribery scheme. At this time there was an investigation in the US by a committee of the Senate looking into the wider aspects of the bribery scheme. Mr. Galloway’s name was mentioned again as a main beneficiary of the scheme which he denied and demanded that the senate committee should receive him and listen to his story, a demand which was duly granted and the recently elected member of the respected parliament arrived in front of it few days later and very arrogantly denied everything. The committee’s chairman responded after the hearing saying that the Galloway’s testimony was not very convincing and if it will be shown to have been a bag of lies then there will be very serious consequences.
George Galloway used to hire amongst his other ingenious gimmicks one of the famous red double deck London buses and drive it across North Africa gathering few similarly minded people and arrive in Baghdad for few days of political carnivals in support of Saddam and private meetings with the leader himself and leave afterwards as it is rumored here with a lot of cash and oil coupons which he would trade with interested buyers. The trading process which is said to have brought him huge sums of money, which he used to finance his respect party and use it to regain his lost seat in the Parliament. My real surprise in all this is the fact that there were Americans and others from other parts of the world who were so naive and accepted his denials and seem to believe that he was innocent.
Nobody in politics does anything for purely altruistic reasons, today’s politics is like a den of vice where it is impossible to find a nun.
I have been trying to delay talking about the messy situation here until next week, but very strong emotions and extremely serious dangers are always attracting me to the subject. Please allow me to make the following few remarks. The current situation in this country is very dangerous and unpredictable, a very important factor in this mess is what looks like a deliberate attempt at marginalizing the Sunnis. This society is based on three major pillars, The Sunnis are a very important pillar and unless they are brought into the processes of reconstruction of the country the whole exercise is doomed to failure.
Dr. NajeebHanoudi
Baghdad, May 28, 2005
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