Deepening Crisis and a Missing Friend

by Karen Button

A week ago I waved goodbye to my dear friend Aisha as the suburban bound for Iraq pulled away from the curb at 4:30am. With the bedlam that now defines daily life for Iraqis, I was, needless to say, deeply concerned about her return.

“There was a huge explosion in Fallujah as we passed by,” she says when I finally reach her the following evening, “and it was really strange to pull into Baghdad. The whole city is dark, except for those who have generators.” But, she had arrived. She was safe.

Today, as violence continued to engulf Iraq in response to the bombing of the holy Shi’a Askariya Mosque in Samarra, I am trying not to think the worst. None of us have heard from Aisha in three days.

Scheduled to be in Samarra yesterday, she never showed up. I call another friend in Baghdad, who is a neighbor with Aisha’s family. When I tell him my concerns and ask if he would call Aisha’s family, casually, so as not to worry them, he offers to walk over instead. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” he gently chastises. “Look, I will call on the family, as if I am just passing by, and then ask after Aisha.”

I think back to last night when I was chatting with him on the net and there were gunshots in the background.

“Are they close?” I ask. “It’s ok, they stopped,” he replies. Then, “they are back, closer now.”

“Is everything ok?”

“Don’t worry, Karen, this is our life here now. We hear these things all the time.” Then he abruptly types “I must go now. Bye,” and he’s gone.

I sat looking at the screen for a full minute, hoping he and his family were fine, knowing this is what Iraq looks like. It’s not the first time we’ve been talking and there have been gunshots. I tell myself it’s ok, that they’ve been through countless nights like this and they’ve been ok.

Except that at least 80 people had just been killed, because after months of speculation, Iraq really is on the brink of a civil war.

With the bombing of one Shi’a Islam’s holiest sites, the Askariya shrine, in Samarra on Wednesday, sectarian violence has claimed at least 130 lives so far. Ninety Sunni mosques have been attacked in retaliation, three clerics killed and the government is on the verge of collapsing.

And, this morning, my friend is going to drop by Aisha’s as if he’s just out for a stroll. “Is it safe this morning?” “Yes, it’s ok,” he assures me.

He calls me back in an hour. “Aisha went to Haditha with a friend, her mother told me.” Good. So, now we call Haditha. Except that we find out all the transmission sites have been bombed and there are no working land lines in Haditha. We finally reach another friend who has cousins in Haditha with cell phones. Fortunately, they work and we find out Aisha was there Wednesday.

But, where is she now? Samarra is closed and has been since Wednesday when huge demonstrations broke out protesting what many see as attempts from outside influences to provoke civil war. In the aftermath though, three journalists working for Al-Arabiya are kidnapped and later found dead, bringing the death toll for journalists and media assistances to 82 since the start of the war. Iraq, for the third straight year, has been listed as the most dangerous place in the world for journalists to work, especially if they are Iraqi.

Finally we realise we’ve done everything we can and now there’s nothing to do but wait. It’s a helpless feeling that gives me a glimpse of what Iraqis deal with daily.

Later in the evening, an urgent message scrolls across the news: the government has declared a daytime curfew until 4pm on Friday, preventing people from attending the most important weekly prayers. What they don’t say, but is abundantly clear from the areas the curfew is imposed—Diyala, Suleimanyia and Babylon, in addition to Baghdad—is these are predominantly Sunni areas, though there has also been significant violence in predominantly-Shi’a Basrah.

It also means that wherever Aisha is, she’s stuck there until the curfew ends. If it ends. The government also declared there will be another announcement Friday afternoon that may extend the curfew.

Iraqis often rhetorically ask me—after they’ve related a story about how it now takes 2 hours to drive the 20-minute road to work, or how they live on the 13th floor and were without electricity (meaning no elevator) last week for three days, or how when they walk out the door in the morning they don’t know if they will return at night, or how people even drive on the sidewalks now because there are so many roadblocks—“this is the liberation?”

After three years, Iraq is still a country under occupation, with a puppet government, and with no functioning infrastructure.

If there were, my friend Aisha wouldn’t be taking her life in her hands to deliver suitcases of medical supplies to hospitals.