A Dispatch from Dahr Jamail-Displaced Iraqis Simmering with Anger in Amman

[chlamor]

Displaced Iraqis Simmering with Anger in Amman

Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches

Amman, Jordan, May 22, 2005


"The American troops have not come for the benefit of the Iraqi people," says Mohammed Majid Abrahim, a fifty-two-year-old former resident of Baghdad. "They are stealing from the Iraqis, and now all our problems are because of the invaders."

<snip>

His hope for his home country?

"Iraqis must have a new government, this time with legal elections," he explains while we stand in the shade of a palm tree, "I think we need a revolution to get things back to where they once were for us. Then, Insh'Allah I will go back. Saddam was so much better than these bastards , even though I hated him."

His opinion is not unique, nor is it unfounded when we consider the facts. Recently at the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London, it was reported by journalist John Pilger that Dr. Les Roberts, who led the US-Iraqi research team that conducted the first comprehensive study of civilian deaths in Iraq, gave a lecture in which he again presented his findings (published in the most respected medical journal in the world, the Lancet): that a minimum of 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died violent deaths in their country in the last two years, the vast majority of them at the hands of occupation forces.

<snip>

Ghaleb is a carpenter from Nasiriyah. The forty-year-old Shia carpenter came to Amman one year ago because the security situation in his city was so horrible. He, like Mohammed, holds a deep disdain toward the coalition forces. "The occupiers should leave immediately," he explains while sipping tea, "They only came with their own interests and we can manage Iraq for ourselves. We do not need them for any reason."

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=7914

[Blue_In_AK]

1. Dahr Jamail, a nice Anchorage boy,

a long way from home.