About a month ago, I posted my first (sorta, I had gotten scooped and deleted a prior one) diary, Worth A Read: Leila Fadel, Baghdad Observer. My motivation was to get as many Kossacks as I could to take a sip from a well of knowledge of what it's really like "on the ground", no Kool-Aid, just really cold water.
The Divide: On Sunday I spent the day in two Yazidi villages in west Ninewah province. Here they have nothing. Along the dusty roads, beige clay houses blend into the landscape. There is no running water or electricity. Now they have less than ever. More than 400 people were killed last week in four coordinated truck bombings...
I know how addictive that wrenchingly cold water was for me and I sincerely hope it was for those few who read the diary and for all of you who are reading this one.
More below:
Since then, Leila has posted many more entries to her diary...
In memory of Anwar: Anwar Abbas Lafta, a CBS translator and a friend, was killed by gunmen who stole him from his home. His body was found in the morgue last night among so many others.
I remember talking to him about fear. I asked him if he was ever scared that someone would come for him.
and this report with a mention of a surreal "media luncheon" hosted by "an American General".
How many have died?: I thought back to a media luncheon with a U.S. General earlier this week. I sat down and the American General asked the media to please change the perception that Sunnis and Shiites were killing each other in Iraq. He asked that when we go back to the United States we try to change that perception.
There's more there, a whole lot more, on subjects ranging from Blackwater to how they decide whether or not they can go out, and then by what route, to cover a story, always with the background of fear engendered by an environment we can only begin to imagine.
I've found myself going back to her page almost daily now, screaming inside at the injustice that voices like hers are but whispers compared to the constant blaring of the noise machine. I've emailed the folks at Countdown in hopes that maybe someday KO and Leila will face each other across the narrow divide of a splitscreen. We, as a nation, need to hear more from this perspective.