Interesting blog. Live from Baghdad

[Almighty Colin]

http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/

[Rox]

Here's another one:

Kevin Sites

First-person account of a solo journalist's life on the front lines of war.

Note: Kevin Sites is a CNN correspondent, but this is a personal website not affiliated with, endorsed by, or funded by CNN. Archives of Kevin's work are available here, and at CNN.com.

[Rolo]

The live Baghdad feed from CNN is kinda good... http://www.cnn.com/ 300KB with sound... no news flash, no breaking news etc... just a real view and the sound of the city. Beats most blogs from Baghdag - IMHO

[Almighty Colin]

http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/

The most disturbing news today has come from Al-Jazeera, they said that nine B52 bombers have left the airfield in Britain and flying “presumably” towards Iraq, as if they would be doing a spin around the block. Anyway they have 6 hours to get here.
Last night was very quiet in Baghdad. Today in the morning I went out to get bread and groceries. There were no Ba’ath party people stopping us from leaving the area where we live, this apparently happens after the evening prayers. But they are still everywhere. The streets are empty only bakeries are open and some grocery shops charging 4 times the normal prices, while I was buying bread a police car stopped in front of the bakery and asked the baker if they had enough flour and asked when they opened; the baker told me that they have been informed that they must open their shops and they get flour delivered to them daily. Groceries, meat and dairy products are a different story. One dairy product company seems to be still operating, not state owned, and their cars were going around the city distributing butter, cheese and yoghurt to any open markets. Meat is not safe to buy because you wouldn’t know from where and how it got to the shops. Anyway we bought fresh tomatoes and zucchini for 1000 dinar a kilo which would normally be 250. and most amazingly the garbage car came around.
The Iraqi Satellite Channel is not broadcasting anymore. The second youth TV channel (it shows Egyptian soaps in the morning and sports afterwards) also stopped transmitting. This leaves two channels: Iraq TV and Shabab (youth) TV. They are still full of patriotic songs and useless “news”, they love the French here. We also saw the latest Sahaf show on Al-Jazeera and Iraq TV, and the most distressing minister of Interior affairs with his guns. Freaks. Hurling abuse at the world is the only thing left for them to do.
On BBC we are watching scenes of Iraqis surrendering. My youngest cousin was muttering “what shame” to himself, yes it is better for them to do that but still seeing them carrying that white flag makes something deep inside you cringe.
we sit infront of the TV with the mao of Iraq on our laps trying to figure out what is going on in the south.

[Trev]

It really brings it home when you read the words of someone trying to continue life as normal as possible in the middle of a war zone... watching the live feeds as the cruise missiles slam into buildings really brings up the hairs on the back of my neck...

[Opti]

I just heard on the radio that those B52 bombers should arrive over IRaq in just under 3 hours from now ..


Reading some of the thoughts of that person is pretty eerie.. they sound like they could any one of us here


I found this bit interesting.. I had the impression Iraq was more of a fundementalist Islamic state, a bit like Iran..

Do you know when the sight of women veiled from top to bottom became common in cities in Iraq? Do you know when the question of segregation between boys and girls became red hot? When tribal law replaced THE LAW? When Wahabi became part of our vocabulary?
It only happened after the Gulf War. I think it was Cheney or Albright who said they will bomb Iraq back to the stone age, well you did. Iraqis have never accepted religious extremism in their lives. They still don’t.

[Trev]

Originally posted by Opti@Mar 21 2003, 02:59 PM
I just heard on the radio that those B52 bombers should arrive over IRaq in just under 3 hours from now ..


Reading some of the thoughts of that person is pretty eerie.. they sound like they could any one of us here


I found this bit interesting.. I had the impression Iraq was more of a fundementalist Islamic state, a bit like Iran..

Wasn’t the Islamic fundamentalism one of the reasons they went to war with Iran?

I do remember before the war (Iran) they where a country not to dissimilar to Saudi...

[gigi]

I agree...that blog makes things much more real for me....I find it much more thought provoking and realistic than watching tanks roll across the desert....

Good score Colin.

[gigi]

http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/

Nothing written since Friday...

[Almighty Colin]

The last two days we didn’t have internet access. I thought that was it and started what a friend called a “pblog”, what you will read is what should have been the entries for the 22nd and 23rd.
Blogger and Google have created a mirror to this weblog at [dearraed.blogspot.com] for those of you who have trouble with the underscore in the URL. There are not enough words to thank the people at Blogger for their help and support.

22/3
4:30pm (day3)
half an hour ago the oil filled trenches were put on fire. First watching Al-jazeera they said that these were the places that got hit by bombs from an air raid a few miniutes earlier bit when I went up to the roof to take a look I saw that there were too many of them, we heard only three explosions. I took pictures of the nearest. My cousine came and told me he saw police cars standing by one and setting it on fire. Now you can see the columns of smoke all over the city.
Todat the third in the war, we had quite a number of attacks during daytime. Some without air-raid sirens. They probably just gave up on being able to be on time to sound the sirens. Last night, after waves after waves of attacks, they would sound the all-clear siren only to start another raid siren 30 minutes later.

The images we saw on TV last night (not Iraqi, jazeera-BBC-Arabiya) were terrible. The whole city looked as if it were on fire. The only thing I could think of was “why does this have to happen to Baghdad”. As one of the buildings I really love went up in a huge explosion I was close to tears. today my father and brother went out to see what happening in the city, they say that it does look that the hits were very precise but when the missiles and bombs explode they wreck havoc in the neighborhood where they fall. Houses near al-salam palace(where the minister Sahaf took journalist) have had all their windows broke, doors blown in and in one case a roof has caved in. I guess that is what is called “collateral damage” and that makes it OK?
We worry about daytime bombing and the next round of attacks tonight with the added extra of the smoke screen in our skies.

23/3
8:30pm (day4)
we start counting the hours from the moment one of the news channels report that the B52s have left their airfield. It takes them around 6 hours to get to Iraq. On the first day of the bombing it worked precisely. Yesterday we were a bit surprised that after 6 hours bombs didn’t start falling. The attacks on Baghdad were much less than two days ago. We found out today in the news that the city of Tikrit got the hell bombed out of it. To day the B52s took off at 3pm, on half an hour we will know whether it is Baghdad tonight or another city. Karbala was also hit last night.

Today’s (and last night’s) shock attacks didn’t come from airplanes but rather from the airwaves. The images Al-jazeera is broadcasting are beyond any description. First was the attack on (Ansar el Islam) camp in the north of Iraq. Then the images of civilian casualties in Basra city. What was most disturbing are the images from the hospitals. They are simply not prepared to deal with these things. People were lying on the floor with bandages and blood all over. If this is what “urban warefare” is going to look like we’re in for disaster. And just now the images of US/UK prisoners and dead, we saw these on Iraqi TV earlier. This war is starting to show its ugly ugly face to the world.

The media wars have also started, Al-jazeera accusing the pentagon of not showing how horrific this war is turning out to be and Rumsfeld saying that it is regrettable that some TV stations have shown the images.

Today before noon I went out with my cousin to take a look at the city. Two things. 1) the attacks are precise. 2) they are attacking targets which are just too close to civilian areas in Baghdad. Looked at the Salam palace and the houses around it. Quite scary near it and you can see widows with broken glass till very far off. At another neighborhood I saw a very unexpected “target” it is an officers’ club of some sorts smack in the middle of [………] district. I guess it was not severely hit because it was still standing but the houses around it, and this is next door and across the street, were damaged. One of them is rubble the rest are clearing away glass and rubble. A garbage car stands near the most damaged houses and help with the cleaning up.

Generally the streets are quite busy. Lots of cars but not many shops open. The market near our house is almost empty now. The shop owner says that all the wholesale markets in Shorjah are closed now but the prices of vegetables and fruits have gone down to normal and are available.

While buying groceries the woman who sells the vegetables was talking to another about the approach of American armies to Najaf city and about what is happening at Um Qasar and Basra. If Um Qasar is so difficult to control what will happen when they get to Baghdad? It will turn uglier and this is very worrying. People (and I bet “allied forces”) were expecting things to be mush easier. There are no waving masses of people welcoming the Americans nor are they surrendering by the thousands. People are oing what all of us are, sitting in their homes hoping that a bomb doesn’t fall on them and keeping their doors shut.

The smoke columns have now encircled Baghdad, well almost. The wids blow generally to the east which leaves the western side of Baghdad clear. But when it comes in the way of the sun it covers it totally, it is a very thick cloud. We are going to have some very dark days, literally.
We still have electricity; some areas in Baghdad don’t after last night’s attack. Running water and phones are working.

Yesterday many leaflets were dropped on Baghdad, while going around in the streets I got lucky, I have two. After being so unkind to the people at [industrialdeathrock.com] I don’t know whether I should post images or not.

And we have had another email attack, this time I was lucky again and have copies of those, the sender is something called [blablabla@hotpop.com]. I have not checked on that yet. Three of them are to army personnel and two to the general public in those they gave us the radio frequencies we are supposed to listen to. They are calling it “information Radio”.

[Menace]

you sure can pick 'em Colin. I saw a piece on this site on Cnn's headline news last night.

[Almighty Colin]

Originally posted by Menace@Mar 25 2003, 11:19 AM
you sure can pick 'em Colin. I saw a piece on this site on Cnn's headline news last night.

Wow. That's cool. I wish there were more sites like this. I'd like to see more perspectives from the inside.

[Almighty Colin]

2/05/03

Powell speech is around 6pm in Baghdad, the whole family is getting together for tea and dates-pastry to watch the (Powell Rocks the UN) show. Not on Iraqi TV of course, we have decided to put up the satellite dish to watch it, yes we will put it away afterwards until the next event. I don’t exactly like the thought of two months in prison just to have 24 hour BBC (no free CNN on ArabSat which is the only sat we get with our tiny dish).

[VooMan]

Hey Colin,

There are a lot of interesting "war blog" sites, one of the most popular being The Agonist. From there you can visit other war blogs leaning to the left, right, etc...

These sites are not a minute by minute account by someone living in Bagdhad like the one you mention, but they are quite interesting.



Last edited by VooMan at Mar 25 2003, 11:45 AM

[Almighty Colin]

2/21 on human shields

One of the latest group to arrive in Baghdad, mostly Europeans, were welcomed to the Rasheed hotel , which is like the Waldorf Astoria of Baghdad, no other hotel is more expensive and exclusive. All of them were wearing T-shirts with what was supposed to be "Human Shields" in Arabic, but they had it all wrong it said "Adra'a Basharia" instead of "Duru'u Basharia" which got them a few giggles and a new name; they are now the "Adra'a" just to show how clueless they are. A lot of funny Arabic these days with all these HS's running around, a van with a foreign number plate standing near the ministry of information has "No War" written all over it in many languages the biggest in Arabic. All over the front of it is says "La Harba" which is wrong and sounds like a night club, my cousin thought that was cute. Anyway, what really got my goat this time was finding out that they get food coupons worth 15,000 dinars per meal, 3 for every day.fifteen thousan.

Do you know how much the monthly food ration for a 4 person family is worth, for a whole month not per meal (real cost, not subsidized) ? 30,000 dinars, if you get someone to buy the bad rice they give you for a decent price. 15,000. What are they eating? A whole lamb every meal? Let's put this within context. Today in the morning Raed, our friend G. and I went for a late big breakfast we had 2 tishreeb bagilas (can't explain that, you have to be an Iraqi to get it otherwise it sounds inedible) and a makhlama (which is an omelet with minced meat), tea, fizzy drinks and argila afterwards (the water-pipe-thingy) all for 4,750 dinars, and we were not going super cheap. A lunch in any above-average restaurant will not be more than 8,000 dinars and that includes everything. 15,000 thousand is a meal in a super expensive restaurant in Arasat Street, in one of those places that really almost have an "only foreigners allowed, no Iraqis welcome unless you are UN staff" sign on it. I will stop calling them tourist when they stop taking all this pampering from the Iraqi government. Did I tell you about the tours? Today was Babylon day. You are really missing it, the cheapest way to do the Iraq trip you have wanted to do but were too scared.

[Almighty Colin]

Originally posted by VooMan@Mar 25 2003, 11:36 AM
Hey Colin,

There are a lot of interesting "war blog" sites, one of the most popular being The Agonist. From there you can visit other ware blogs leaning to the left, right, etc...

These sites are not a minute by minute account by someone living in Bagdhad like the one you mention, but they are quite interesting.

Hey. thanks!

[gigi]

All of them were wearing T-shirts with what was supposed to be "Human Shields" in Arabic, but they had it all wrong it said "Adra'a Basharia" instead of "Duru'u Basharia" which got them a few giggles and a new name; they are now the "Adra'a" just to show how clueless they are.

Oh My....lmao! That is toooo funny.....but I wish he told us what 'Adra'a' means!!

[Almighty Colin]

Salam Pax. The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi available from Amazon.com



Last edited by Colin at Sep 9 2003, 10:23 AM

[Mike AI]

Originally posted by Colin@Sep 9 2003, 10:22 AM
Salam Pax. The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi available from Amazon.com

Very cool. Free Markets are already working in Iraq!! Entrepreneurism is a good start for Iraq!

[Almighty Colin]

Originally posted by Mike AI+Sep 9 2003, 10:52 AM-->