Pacific Views

'Waiting it out and hoping for the best.'

In all of the stories from Iraq the past few days, we've heard little from what it feels like to be an Iraqi, living in a country that may be heading into a civil war. Riverbend fills some of that void with the latest from her part of Baghdad:

It does not feel like civil war because Sunnis and Shia have been showing solidarity these last few days in a big way. I don't mean the clerics or the religious zealots or the politicians — but the average person. Our neighborhood is mixed and Sunnis and Shia alike have been outraged with the attacks on mosques and shrines....

Yesterday they were showing Sunni and Shia clerics praying together in a mosque and while it looked encouraging, I couldn't help but feel angry. Why don't they simply tell their militias to step down — to stop attacking mosques and husseiniyas — to stop terrorizing people? It's so deceptive and empty on television — like a peaceful vision from another land. The Iraqi government is pretending dismay, but it's doing nothing to curb the violence and the bloodshed beyond a curfew. And where are the Americans in all of this? They are sitting back and letting things happen — sometimes flying a helicopter here or there — but generally not getting involved.

I'm reading, and hearing, about the possibility of civil war. The possibility. Yet I'm sitting here wondering if this is actually what civil war is like. Has it become a reality? Will we look back at this in one year, two years ... ten ... and say, "It began in February 2006 ..."? It is like a nightmare in that you don't realise it's a nightmare while having it — only later, after waking up with your heart throbbing, and your eyes searching the dark for a pinpoint of light, do you realise it was a nightmare ...

Via Baghdad Burning.

Posted by Magpie at February 27, 2006 09:30 PM | Iraq | Technorati links |