BESIEGED BY DEATH, YOUNG IRAQIS LOSE HOPE
By Sabrina Tavernise The New York Times
International Herald Tribune, France
Oct 8 2006
BAGHDAD In a dimly lighted living room in central Baghdad, Noor is a
lonely teenage prisoner. Many of his friends have left the country,
and some who have stayed have strange new habits: A Shiite acts
holier-than-thou; a Sunni joins an armed gang.
At 19, Noor is neither working nor in college. He is not even allowed
outdoors.
Three and a half years after the U.S.- led invasion, the relentless
violence that has disfigured much of Iraqi society is hitting
young Iraqis in new ways. Young people from five different Baghdad
neighborhoods say that their lives have shrunk to the size of their
bedrooms and that their dreams have been packed away and largely
forgotten. Life is lived in moments. It is no longer possible to
make plans.
"I can’t go outside; I can’t go to college," said Noor, sitting in
the kitchen waiting for tea to boil. "If I’m killed, it doesn’t even
matter because I’m dead right now."
The U.S. military is trying to address the problem. In August, it began
the most systematic series of sweeps of Baghdad since the war began,
trying to make the worst neighborhoods safe for a return to normal
life. It appears to be bearing some fruit, with deaths in the city
down about 17 percent in August from July, according to a UN report
based on morgue statistics.
But violence between the sects here continues at a frantic pace,
wiping out ever more of what middle ground remains. Young Iraqis
trying to resist its pull are frozen in an impossible present with
no good future in sight.
The speed of the descent has been breathtaking. A few months ago,
Noor was taking final exams, squabbling with his little brother and
hanging out at home with his friends. But violence touched the family’s
outer edge. His father’s business partner was killed on a desert road
far from Baghdad because he was a Shiite, and things began to unravel.
Fearing that the man may have divulged details about them, Noor’s
parents accelerated their plans for Noor and his younger brother to
leave Iraq. His brother was moved to the safety of northern Iraq,
but Noor was forced to return after the British authorities rejected
his student-visa application.
Since coming back, he spends most days in his living room on the
computer, listening to the sounds of life outside his gate. He wants
to enroll in college here and even had one of his friends sneak him
an application, but his parents will not let him go. Campuses are
volatile mixes of sects and ethnicities, and sectarian killings of
students are no longer rare.
Before the epidemic of neighborhood assassinations began last year,
it was a rare middle-class Iraqi who had a peer involved in sectarian
killing. But as the killing spread, larger portions of the population
have been radicalized.
For Noor, a secular Sunni who is solidly middle class, the sectarian
killing has broken squarely into his circle of friends. A friend
from Adhamiya, a Sunni Arab center in Baghdad, joined a neighborhood
militia after his father was shot to death in front of their home.
Noor heard through friends that he had set up a roadside bomb to kill
Iraqi troops.
"He hates the Shia because they killed his father," said Noor, speaking
in fluent English. "He became a different person. He became a monster."
It is that radicalization that most frightens Noor’s mother. Most of
the casualties and the perpetrators in the sectarian killing are young
men. With few jobs and no hope for justice through the government,
armed gangs and militias are extremely alluring to them.
"I’m afraid he’ll be drawn to certain currents," she said. "There is
a lot of anger inside."
A few of Noor’s Shiite friends feel a new passion for their identity,
and he now finds it difficult to relate to them.
"I can’t tell them my true feelings," he said. "I started to expect
something bad from them."
As little as a year ago, most Iraqis dismissed fears of sectarian
war. Iraqis of different sects had always mixed, they argued, and no
amount of bombing would change that. But as the texture of the violence
changed from spectacular car bombs set by Sunnis to quiet killings
in neighborhoods of both sects, few still cling to that belief.
Another young man, Safe, 21, stands guard with a machine gun three
nights a week to protect his block in the ravaged neighborhood of
Dora. As a Sunni, he fears Shiite death squads and policemen. Seven
of his friends have been detained and beaten. He has attended more
than a dozen funerals for murdered Sunnis in recent months.
"Sectarian stuff has come into our life from all doors," Safe said,
speaking in quick bursts. "I am afraid of these checkpoints. They
tell you five minutes, and keep you for a month."
The constant battle has left a bad taste in his mouth for Shiites
who strongly assert their identity.
Safe got into a fistfight with a Shiite student at the medical school
where he is a student. His campus is in heavily Shiite eastern
Baghdad. A professor referred to the healing powers of a Shiite
imam during a physiology lecture this year, to the fury of the Sunni
students. Even the typical Shiite jewelry, silver rings with smooth
round stones, he finds irritating.
"When you see them, you want to throw up," Safe said, referring to
chauvinist Shiites.
Dora, once a mixed middle-class neighborhood, has been among the most
lethal for Shiites over the past two years. Shiite residents report
brutal killings for offenses as minor as pinning up posters of Shiite
saints in shops. Now few Shiites remain.
Safe acknowledged that Shiites were singled out, but said insurgents
only went after those working with Americans. Other Shiites received
threats for spying on mosques, he said.
Safe’s father died when he was young and his mother died of cancer
last year. His neighborhood watch group helps him to have a sense
of purpose, to feel connected, at a time when young Iraqis are more
isolated than they have ever been.
As Baghdad grows increasingly divided into a Shiite east and a Sunni
west along the Tigris River, neighborhood life is becoming equally
as homogeneous for young Shiites.
Every morning, Ali Wahid, 27, rides his motorbike past a dusty soccer
park in the capital’s largest Shiite district, Sadr City, to work in
southeastern Baghdad. He holds tightly to his job, a water project
that is part of the U.S. effort here, but would never agree to go
west of the Tigris, where Sunni neighborhoods are deadly for Shiites.
A friend, Hamza Daraji, who does odd jobs in Sadr City, said he had
not left the district in two years.
Wahid, sitting cross-legged on the floor of his modest two-story house,
says his life has improved since the invasion. His job has allowed
him to pay off debts, buy a house with his brothers and even afford
to marry. There are fewer Sunnis in his life now than there were
when Saddam Hussein ruled. In some ways, relations then were easier,
he said, because as the ruling class, the Sunnis were less likely to
lash out.
"Before I could joke with Sunnis about Saddam," he said. "Now if I
talk against him, I’m afraid they might hurt me later in a secret way."
The Sharqiya Secondary School in Baghdad began the day one recent
Thursday with a prayer. The new headmaster, a religious Shiite, took
the unusual step of telling the entire student body, several hundred
girls, that "the first way we hail the Iraqi flag is by giving prayers
to Muhammad and his family," referring to the Prophet Muhammad and
his family members, whom Shiites consider to be holy.
Three Armenian Christians raised the flag.
"We feel desperate, desperate, desperate," said Sena Hussein, an
assistant principal whose daughter is a high school senior. The
school, once known citywide for its basketball team, no longer has
after-school sports, as parents considered it too risky. Trophies
in a dusty glass cabinet stand a short way from the entrance to the
principal’s office. Even enrollment is down. The school used to get
150 new students a year. This year it has about 60.
Prospects for higher education for women coming of age in the capital
have also dimmed.
Sara, a graceful 10th grader with perfect English and straight A’s,
will not be allowed to go to college in Iraq by her parents, who fear
killings en route and on campus. The caution will cut out the mixing
of young Iraqi men and women, as college is the first chance they
get to be together. High schools in Iraq are single-sex institutions.
"The future is totally unclear for me now," she said, standing in the
courtyard of the school as girls buzzed behind her, busily cleaning
classrooms. "I don’t know what would happen to me in college. Maybe
I would get killed."
Hosham Hussein, Omar al-Neami and Khalid al-Ansary contributed
reporting.
BAGHDAD In a dimly lighted living room in central Baghdad, Noor is a
lonely teenage prisoner. Many of his friends have left the country,
and some who have stayed have strange new habits: A Shiite acts
holier-than-thou; a Sunni joins an armed gang.
At 19, Noor is neither working nor in college. He is not even allowed
outdoors.
Three and a half years after the U.S.- led invasion, the relentless
violence that has disfigured much of Iraqi society is hitting
young Iraqis in new ways. Young people from five different Baghdad
neighborhoods say that their lives have shrunk to the size of their
bedrooms and that their dreams have been packed away and largely
forgotten. Life is lived in moments. It is no longer possible to
make plans.
"I can’t go outside; I can’t go to college," said Noor, sitting in
the kitchen waiting for tea to boil. "If I’m killed, it doesn’t even
matter because I’m dead right now."
The U.S. military is trying to address the problem. In August, it began
the most systematic series of sweeps of Baghdad since the war began,
trying to make the worst neighborhoods safe for a return to normal
life. It appears to be bearing some fruit, with deaths in the city
down about 17 percent in August from July, according to a UN report
based on morgue statistics.
But violence between the sects here continues at a frantic pace,
wiping out ever more of what middle ground remains. Young Iraqis
trying to resist its pull are frozen in an impossible present with
no good future in sight.
The speed of the descent has been breathtaking. A few months ago,
Noor was taking final exams, squabbling with his little brother and
hanging out at home with his friends. But violence touched the family’s
outer edge. His father’s business partner was killed on a desert road
far from Baghdad because he was a Shiite, and things began to unravel.
Fearing that the man may have divulged details about them, Noor’s
parents accelerated their plans for Noor and his younger brother to
leave Iraq. His brother was moved to the safety of northern Iraq,
but Noor was forced to return after the British authorities rejected
his student-visa application.
Since coming back, he spends most days in his living room on the
computer, listening to the sounds of life outside his gate. He wants
to enroll in college here and even had one of his friends sneak him
an application, but his parents will not let him go. Campuses are
volatile mixes of sects and ethnicities, and sectarian killings of
students are no longer rare.
Before the epidemic of neighborhood assassinations began last year,
it was a rare middle-class Iraqi who had a peer involved in sectarian
killing. But as the killing spread, larger portions of the population
have been radicalized.
For Noor, a secular Sunni who is solidly middle class, the sectarian
killing has broken squarely into his circle of friends. A friend
from Adhamiya, a Sunni Arab center in Baghdad, joined a neighborhood
militia after his father was shot to death in front of their home.
Noor heard through friends that he had set up a roadside bomb to kill
Iraqi troops.
"He hates the Shia because they killed his father," said Noor, speaking
in fluent English. "He became a different person. He became a monster."
It is that radicalization that most frightens Noor’s mother. Most of
the casualties and the perpetrators in the sectarian killing are young
men. With few jobs and no hope for justice through the government,
armed gangs and militias are extremely alluring to them.
"I’m afraid he’ll be drawn to certain currents," she said. "There is
a lot of anger inside."
A few of Noor’s Shiite friends feel a new passion for their identity,
and he now finds it difficult to relate to them.
"I can’t tell them my true feelings," he said. "I started to expect
something bad from them."
As little as a year ago, most Iraqis dismissed fears of sectarian
war. Iraqis of different sects had always mixed, they argued, and no
amount of bombing would change that. But as the texture of the violence
changed from spectacular car bombs set by Sunnis to quiet killings
in neighborhoods of both sects, few still cling to that belief.
Another young man, Safe, 21, stands guard with a machine gun three
nights a week to protect his block in the ravaged neighborhood of
Dora. As a Sunni, he fears Shiite death squads and policemen. Seven
of his friends have been detained and beaten. He has attended more
than a dozen funerals for murdered Sunnis in recent months.
"Sectarian stuff has come into our life from all doors," Safe said,
speaking in quick bursts. "I am afraid of these checkpoints. They
tell you five minutes, and keep you for a month."
The constant battle has left a bad taste in his mouth for Shiites
who strongly assert their identity.
Safe got into a fistfight with a Shiite student at the medical school
where he is a student. His campus is in heavily Shiite eastern
Baghdad. A professor referred to the healing powers of a Shiite
imam during a physiology lecture this year, to the fury of the Sunni
students. Even the typical Shiite jewelry, silver rings with smooth
round stones, he finds irritating.
"When you see them, you want to throw up," Safe said, referring to
chauvinist Shiites.
Dora, once a mixed middle-class neighborhood, has been among the most
lethal for Shiites over the past two years. Shiite residents report
brutal killings for offenses as minor as pinning up posters of Shiite
saints in shops. Now few Shiites remain.
Safe acknowledged that Shiites were singled out, but said insurgents
only went after those working with Americans. Other Shiites received
threats for spying on mosques, he said.
Safe’s father died when he was young and his mother died of cancer
last year. His neighborhood watch group helps him to have a sense
of purpose, to feel connected, at a time when young Iraqis are more
isolated than they have ever been.
As Baghdad grows increasingly divided into a Shiite east and a Sunni
west along the Tigris River, neighborhood life is becoming equally
as homogeneous for young Shiites.
Every morning, Ali Wahid, 27, rides his motorbike past a dusty soccer
park in the capital’s largest Shiite district, Sadr City, to work in
southeastern Baghdad. He holds tightly to his job, a water project
that is part of the U.S. effort here, but would never agree to go
west of the Tigris, where Sunni neighborhoods are deadly for Shiites.
A friend, Hamza Daraji, who does odd jobs in Sadr City, said he had
not left the district in two years.
Wahid, sitting cross-legged on the floor of his modest two-story house,
says his life has improved since the invasion. His job has allowed
him to pay off debts, buy a house with his brothers and even afford
to marry. There are fewer Sunnis in his life now than there were
when Saddam Hussein ruled. In some ways, relations then were easier,
he said, because as the ruling class, the Sunnis were less likely to
lash out.
"Before I could joke with Sunnis about Saddam," he said. "Now if I
talk against him, I’m afraid they might hurt me later in a secret way."
The Sharqiya Secondary School in Baghdad began the day one recent
Thursday with a prayer. The new headmaster, a religious Shiite, took
the unusual step of telling the entire student body, several hundred
girls, that "the first way we hail the Iraqi flag is by giving prayers
to Muhammad and his family," referring to the Prophet Muhammad and
his family members, whom Shiites consider to be holy.
Three Armenian Christians raised the flag.
"We feel desperate, desperate, desperate," said Sena Hussein, an
assistant principal whose daughter is a high school senior. The
school, once known citywide for its basketball team, no longer has
after-school sports, as parents considered it too risky. Trophies
in a dusty glass cabinet stand a short way from the entrance to the
principal’s office. Even enrollment is down. The school used to get
150 new students a year. This year it has about 60.
Prospects for higher education for women coming of age in the capital
have also dimmed.
Sara, a graceful 10th grader with perfect English and straight A’s,
will not be allowed to go to college in Iraq by her parents, who fear
killings en route and on campus. The caution will cut out the mixing
of young Iraqi men and women, as college is the first chance they
get to be together. High schools in Iraq are single-sex institutions.
"The future is totally unclear for me now," she said, standing in the
courtyard of the school as girls buzzed behind her, busily cleaning
classrooms. "I don’t know what would happen to me in college. Maybe
I would get killed."
Hosham Hussein, Omar al-Neami and Khalid al-Ansary contributed
reporting.