On my mind.....
For the last few days all the things Ali told me about Iraq have been going around in my head. He had called us last month from the US to say he would be passing through Amman on his way to Basra to visit his family who he hadn't seen for 16 years. So he stayed with us for a couple of days. He had never been in Jordan before but one of the things that really struck him was what he called the 'terrible driving'. He must have mentioned this at least 20 times in the couple of days he was here. But let me give you a bit of background.
After the collapse of the Shi'ite upsrising in March 1991, more than 90,000 Iraqis sought refuge with the coalition forces. They were settled in Rafha and Artawiya, remote desert camps in Saudi Arabia, several kilometeres from the Iraqi border. Eventually some 60,000 of the refugees returned to Iraq but around 30,000 stayed in Rafha. Conditions were hard there as it was a restricted camp surrounded by barbed wire fences, with continuous military patrols and nightly curfews. The refugees were cut off from their families. By 1997 most of them had been resettled including over 12,000 that were sent to the US. Ali was one of these. He had spent 7 years in Rafha. When my son went to university in the US they met and became good friends.
I had met Ali several times on my visits to the US and I remember how happy and excited he was at the start of the Gulf War. When Saddam was toppled he was elated. Last week, after one month in Iraq, he passed through Amman again on his way back to the US. All his feelings of happiness and hope for the future seem to have faded. He talked and talked about the problems in Iraq...the lack of electricity, water, and medicines, the lack of social services such as garbage collection, the poor schooling of only three hours a day, that squatters lived in most of the public buildings, and on and on. Over and above all of these problems he talked about the total absence of security. But what astonished me most, and gives one pause for thought, was when he told us that so many of the Iraqis he met, even those who had suffered greatly under Saddam, wish that he were back in power. That is just how bad the situation is today.
In fact the only thing he said that made me smile was, "Driving in Amman is paradise compared with Basra!!"....z
After the collapse of the Shi'ite upsrising in March 1991, more than 90,000 Iraqis sought refuge with the coalition forces. They were settled in Rafha and Artawiya, remote desert camps in Saudi Arabia, several kilometeres from the Iraqi border. Eventually some 60,000 of the refugees returned to Iraq but around 30,000 stayed in Rafha. Conditions were hard there as it was a restricted camp surrounded by barbed wire fences, with continuous military patrols and nightly curfews. The refugees were cut off from their families. By 1997 most of them had been resettled including over 12,000 that were sent to the US. Ali was one of these. He had spent 7 years in Rafha. When my son went to university in the US they met and became good friends.
I had met Ali several times on my visits to the US and I remember how happy and excited he was at the start of the Gulf War. When Saddam was toppled he was elated. Last week, after one month in Iraq, he passed through Amman again on his way back to the US. All his feelings of happiness and hope for the future seem to have faded. He talked and talked about the problems in Iraq...the lack of electricity, water, and medicines, the lack of social services such as garbage collection, the poor schooling of only three hours a day, that squatters lived in most of the public buildings, and on and on. Over and above all of these problems he talked about the total absence of security. But what astonished me most, and gives one pause for thought, was when he told us that so many of the Iraqis he met, even those who had suffered greatly under Saddam, wish that he were back in power. That is just how bad the situation is today.
In fact the only thing he said that made me smile was, "Driving in Amman is paradise compared with Basra!!"....z
posted by joladies at Sunday, April 30, 2006
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