Iraqi Woman Critically Beaten in Calif. (Has Died); Threat Note Left at Scene

[MADem]

35. The deceased has been here since she was twelve years old--she was only 32 when she was clubbed to

death with the tire iron. Her daughter, that she had when she was fifteen, apparently, was more than likely born here unless she went off on a vacation to have her.

Iraq was not "war torn" during the Iran Iraq war, at least not in the way that it was during the US occupation. The bulk of the fighting took place along the Iran Iraq border--it was a lot of death in a relatively small area as each side battled for chunks of ground. That was a war of attrition more than a war of asymmetrical terror and brute force. Except for shortages and funerals, there were many places in both countries where you'd never know there was a war going on, except for male family members being pulled away in the draft and a massive uptick in funerals of adult males mostly under the age of forty.

In Baghdad, when the deceased was just six years old, while the war was still dragging on, they were busy building a "Victory Arch" and parade field--hardly activities that one would engage in if one were under siege: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Arch


She was eight years old when the Iran-Iraq war ground to a halt in a stalemate of exhaustion. She spent four additional years in Iraq with her family. It could easily have been economic opportunity, or maybe even religious persecution if they happened to be a minority faith, not the threat of danger, that motivated the immigration. It is also possible that one or some of the males in her family may have been on someone else's payroll--either ours, or Israel's, or Turkey's, or some other proxy's, and they got spirited out of there in exchange for work done during GW1 Desert Shield or Storm--and that's how the young deceased might have ended up with a husband who ended up working for the American government--one of those old fashioned arranged marriages. That's pure speculation, of course. We do know that the deceased's husband did work for the US ARMY, doing cultural acclimation work--and how else would a refugee girl, fourteen or fifteen years old, meet and marry a guy like that?

The family had lived in the house in San Diego County for only a few weeks, after moving from Michigan, Alzaidy said. Alzaidy told the newspaper her father and Alawadi's husband had previously worked together in San Diego as private contractors for the U.S. Army, serving as cultural advisers to train soldiers who were going to be deployed to the Middle East.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/iraqi-woman-beaten-calif-threat-note-scene-15994270#.T26ZOzGuc1A

We never went in during the Gulf War--we did do some targeted bombing, but I doubt that motivated this family to leave. I think this family--the deceased's parent(s) and the deceased's husband, particularly--had a relationship with the US government or one of our allies in the region, and that played a direct role in their immigration.

We'll see though--there's something "off" about this story, and I do not claim to have any knowledge--I'm just speculating, here. It just doesn't feel like a Hate Crime to me.