February 19, 2007

Some months ago, I wrote a piece called "Stuck at a Red light".
This piece was referring to the Green Zone/Red Zone divide in Baghdad. I urge you to read it because it is most accurate.
Today, a friend forwarded me an article that appeared in the Guardian on exactly the same subject. Life inside the Green Zone : "Mission Imperial" (read full article here and it is a must).
The author, a fairly astute writer describes perfectly well, life inside the Green Zone.
The import and juxtaposition of the rotten American way of life into the city of Baghdad.

Reading it, I felt polluted...

I felt polluted by those three meals a day swine eaters. I could smell the barbqued pork ribs,bacon and sausages.

I could see the wobbly fat personnel diving their shiny sweaty bodies into Saddam Hussein's pool and I could see a trail ring of grease forming behind them...

I could hear their obnoxious nasal accent laughing hard over cocktails and bourbons.

I could see the dining hall with the imposing chandelier and the Americans offering their prayers before each meal, thanking Jesus for his blessings whilst the Muezzin in the Red Zone is calling for the evening prayers intermitted with the Allah Akbars as a code of distress for an imminent attack on a particular neighborhood.

Whilst the Iraqis are begging for food and whilst Iraqi kids are dying of water borne diseases because there is no potable water and cholera is looming, these scums import their water from Kuwait even to rinse their veggies.

Whilst we long to listen to a song or watch a film, these scums are learning how to dance salsa taught by one of the CPA reps.
Remember the Salsa teacher I told you about? Well he is not only in charge of reconstruction projects, he also does what he does best, wiggles his ass to salsa tunes.

I also mentioned secret love affairs in the Green Zone in my article.The author confirms it too. On Thursday nights at the hotel al Rashid disco, the "operationally single" engage in some "mercy" fucking, a question of easing PTSD tensions.

And of course, the few Chinese who are eager to make quick bucks are there to follow up with a scented massage. Thai style perhaps? But now I remember, it is the year of the Pig in the new year Chinese calendar.

Not only the Chinese, you also have a few Iraqis and I have met a few of them...
The Green Zone hookers parading as vendors of kitsch souvenirs and paintings and occasionally other things...eager to please their new masters and ready to oblige in the name of the new Democracy.
But don't be too hard on them. These Iraqis are not the only ones.

There is also the official "government" called puppets but I like to call them the Iraqi pimps from Iran, the USA, GB and the Israeli representatives, the Kurds, headed by our new Ariel Sharon, Jalal Talabani.

But there is also another worse category because they hide behind slogans that are ever so appealing.
Do you know who they are? They are the so called "Iraqi democrats" that populate the blogs and the "alternative groups".
They are the "new Iraq" personified. They are the men and women of the so called "middle way."
The ones who would die to get the approval of the white man (symbolically speaking) yet engage in anti-war demos and cry, oh so much, over poor Baghdad.
And there are many of them around. They are settled just about everywhere...
They are the ones who cried "oh dictatorship" and hold the oh so politically correct language of their masters and parade behind some pseudo intellectual jargon. They of course have their equivalents amongst their "Arab brethren".

You know something, the thing about hitting one's forties is that nothing becomes a secret anymore. One's sense of smell becomes acute and one can whiff the bullshit however old and hardened it may be.
Why am I mentioning them? Because they are as instrumental as the Iraqi hookers and pimps that have politically constructed the Green Zone and have led thousands of Iraqis into the hellish predicament they find themselves in today.

This latter category of "reconciliation" and "managed pocket accounts" are the worst of the lot. They are the hidden corrupted ones who find their echoes in the anti war, left movements in the West. And the list of names is too long...way too long.

The Green Zone would have not been possible without the three above categories. The hookers, the pimps and the politically corrupt sell out... Iraqis.

Truth is harsh, as harsh as the Green Zone fortress that protects the biggest murderers and bandits history has known.
But nothing comes out nothing. Iraqis are also to blame for letting them in and for riding with them by intentions, words, deeds and acts...and supported by those arabs and non arabs dancing to the same beat.

If there is anything that is more hurtful than the Occupation of Iraq, it is these Iraqis.

One can spot one's enemy but the enemy from within is the bitter poison that Iraqis have to swallow daily, whilst the American priest in the Green Zone's mass hall is singing God bless America and Jesus loves you and will forgive your Thursday night mercy fucks for he died for your Iraqi sins on the Iraqi wooden cross...

Good God, the irony is just too much. Someone ought to make a film and I am willing to starr as the one who is "stuck at the red light".

The Iraqi story is a long story...a very long story.
There are so many angles to it and so many corners and so many players.
It is no ordinary occupation story. It is unique, very unique just like Iraq herself.
"Hey my occupation belongs to me" kind of thing...
What a desperate attempt to regain control of at least something...my occupation belongs to me and to no one else...it is mine.
Sheer madness brought on about losing everything else...

Why can't they find something for our PTSD ?
A swimming pool maybe, a couple of chinese masseurs, or a Thursday night disco night?
Or can someone call the priest so I can confess my sins and maybe he can exorcise me from him and his lot's presence in my life?

Those who beefed up (or porked up) the Green Zone were not only the Halliburtons and Co.
There were other caterers as well. Do you want to know whom?
The Arabs of course. You have the Egpytian, Saudi, Kuwaiti, Lebanese, Syrian...middle man.
And do you know who else? I know it will shock you, but hey, the whole Iraqi saga is shocking, you might as well hear the whole thing. The Palestinian middle man. Yes him.

When the CPA was comfortably settling in the Green Zone and putting out tenders, the biggest bidders for catering, food, laundry....contracts were the "prominent" Palestinian families settled in Jordan.
These families would sign contracts with the American army during the day and organize charity dinners and anti-zionist talks in the evenings in solidarity with Jerusalem and the West Bank.

There is an old persian saying that goes: "Don't stir the shit, it might smell worse".
Well I just did...

A new "leaked" oil report from the "Iraqi Government", points to the partition of Iraq into three states. Something I have been repeating over and over and arguing that it is for that sole purpose that the demographic changes through ethnic cleansing are taking place.(with the generous help of Iran through its sectarian militias).

Iraq is finished and lost for ever...at least for a long, long time.

Iraqis and Arabs you should be so fucking proud of yourselves now.
Take your millions to the grave with you but I doubt you will find a paradise beyond...
There was one here and yes it was not perfect but you sold it for a very cheap price as cheap as you.
Today's Iraq is your own mirror.

Painting: Iraqi painter, one of the pionners, the late Khaled Al-Qassab.