Many Iraqis ‘feeling alive’ again
Posted: Thursday, March 19, 2009 11:53 AM
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Baghdad, Iraq
By NBC News’ Karim Hilmi
BAGHDAD – Many Iraqis are feeling optimistic about the future of their country as peace and stability seem to be making a comeback, six years after the U.S. invasion.
The security gains have allowed many people who were displaced by years of sectarian violence to return to their former homes and neighborhoods – or contemplate doing so soon.
Basil Yassen said the gains achieved in the past two years have given the Iraqi people renewed hope. He should know; the horrors of war touched his family directly.
He used to live in the Dora neighborhood of Baghdad, a former bastion for al-Qaida militants who killed his son, Ali, and his wife, Basima, in June 2007.
Their deaths were grisly. Both were tortured and placed in sulfuric acid before they were shot. Yassen only found their corpses 10 days after they were killed.
But now he’s confident that major strides made in Baghdad’s security will allow life to return to a level of normalcy.
"The stability has allowed many displaced families to return to their former neighborhoods and jobs," said Yassen. "Now, I can wander in Baghdad without the fear of being killed or kidnapped for my ethnic or religion or sect background."
An engineer in the Iraqi Naval Force in his late 50s, Yassen thinks that during the coming months Iraq will witness a "revolution" in construction projects, as well as progress in industry and agriculture.
Still waiting
Despite Yassen’s optimism, others are still waiting to go home. Suhad Ali, a 42-year-old high school teacher and the mother of a boy and girl, used to live in Ghazilia, a Sunni neighborhood. But she was forced to relocate her family to the Shiite neighborhood of Ghadeer during the height of the sectarian violence in 2006.
"Security is good in my ex-neighborhood [now], but I wish in the near future it will be fully stable so my family and I can return without being worried," she said.
Ali recalled with pain the day when an armed group gave her husband a warning to leave their house. As Shiites living in a Sunni neighborhood, they had been branded by the militants roaming the area. "We were forced to leave the neighborhood because my husband and I are originally from the Shiite city of Najaf."
She fondly remembered her former students. "I won't forget a single face of my students. I loved them as my daughters, without paying any attention to their religious or sect origin."
Ali is now a teacher in another school, but she is sure that one day she will meet her former students again. "All my students are dear to me, whether in this school or in my previous one, but still I hope to get my job back in my old school."
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Back from abroad
When bombers blasted the gold-gilded dome off Shiite Islam’s holiest site in Iraq, the Askariya Shrine in Samarra, in February 2006, it set off a wave of sectarian violence in which thousands were killed.
Hameed Majeed, a Sunni, was forced to flee his longtime neighborhood, Bay’a, because it was a Shiite enclave.
At the time, he got a threat letter telling him to leave his house. "The militiamen gave an ultimatum to leave my house or else I would be killed because I am a Sunni Kurd."
He and his family lived for some time with his brother's family in the Rasheed neighborhood of Baghdad before moving on to Syria for two years in the hope that they might get a U.S. green card or emigrate to Europe. But their efforts were unsuccessful.
"We spent all our money and no U.N. or world organization gave us any aid," said Majeed.
Now a paramedic in a government hospital, Majeed, 38, returned to Iraq with his family in December 2008 after security improved in Baghdad.
"I feel safe and my kids are back to their school. I have no money to buy furniture, but the main thing is that I am in my house again," he said.
‘Feeling alive’
Salim Mohammed, a 47-year-old pick-up driver, has not moved back to his old neighborhood yet, but is glad to be "feeling alive."
He used to live in the predominately Sunni neighborhood of Adamiya, but feared for his family’s safety after al-Qaida fighters killed, tortured and abducted many Shiites in the neighborhood.
"Those atrocities were a clear message to all Shiites to leave their houses. So we left everything behind and came to Shiite neighborhood of Karrda."
Mohammed, a father of two girls and three boys, now goes from time to time to his old neighborhood to see his house and visit his friends and neighbors. He is impressed with the security gains.
"It is very quiet and peaceful now thanks to joint Iraqi-American forces and the Awakening council members," he said, referring to the predominately Sunni force who have banded together to fight Sunni Islamic extremists. The force, whose salaries are paid by the U.S. military, has been very successful and is credited with reducing levels of violence across the country.
Mohammed said that he has been trying to convince his wife and kids to return to their house in Adamiya, but so far his efforts have been in vain. "They say, ‘We like Karrada.’ They keep telling me, ‘Please father, sell our house and let us buy a new one in Karrada.’ I am actually beginning to like the idea."
Wherever he ends up living, he is relieved to see that Baghdad and many of the other provinces seem stable now.
"Feeling safe and secure is like feeling alive," he said. "My friend, it is hard to live without hope."
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