There's an
excellent article by Germany's leading weekly magazine, Der Spiegel about the current, fucked up situation in Iraq - an astounding example of analytical, in-depth reporting.
For one, the article portrays the reality as it presents itself to the average Iraqi person living in a country torn apart by barbarism, a country descending into pure madness. For every US soldier killed, there are 48 dead Iraqis (according to Kamran Karadaghi, the chief of staff of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani).
Since day one of the end of the Iraq War, Iraqis are captured and hold to ransom by brutal criminals - sadly, the rampant number of abductions only hit the west's attention in 2004 when Nick Berg was executed. While western victims are most likely held for political reasons, the average Iraqi is captured for monetary gain.
Saad Jamil is ten years old and was a pupil at the Ibn al-Heitham elementary school in Adhamiya. In early November, a group of masked men abducted him while he was waiting for a school bus and took him to a warehouse in the Sheikh Omar neighborhood, where they were also holding other children. When the kidnappers called his father, an engineer, and demanded a $100,000 ransom, he barely managed to stammer a sentence, one for which he is ashamed today: "Then kill the boy. I don't have that much money." His son was released in mid-November -- for a tenth of the original ransom demand.
On another note, the article concludes that America's presence not only physically prevents a civil war (by military force), but also that it unifies arch-enemies by being their common foe.
The one goal that unites the various insurgent groups is still too tempting: handing a devastating defeat to the American occupiers. Indeed, some Sunni nationalists claim that this is the only reason they have been willing to align themselves with Zarqawi. "Once the Americans are gone, we will fight the jihadists," promises Abu Kaka al-Tamimi, a former officer in Saddam's elite Republican Guard who now trains suicide bombers. The holy war against the infidels and the promise of a place of honor in paradise holds little allure for him and others who apparently would be perfectly happy with a decent life in this world.
The article also points out that a growing number of Jihadis are Iraqis, an assessement also underlined by King Abdullah in the wake of the Jordanian bombings. This seems to prove the accusations that Iraq might become a recruitment pool for future terrorist attacks.
Although Zarqawi ordered the series of attacks on three luxury hotels in the Jordanian capital Amman on November 9, they were carried out by four Iraqis -- as was confirmed by a woman from Ramadi, the only surviving attacker.
...
"If Zarqawi is eliminated one of these days, he won't be replaced by a foreigner," the king believes. "It will be an Iraqi."
Damn... just go read that article :P
http://service.spiegel.de/...