Iraqi blogs.

I have been reading a lot of Iraqi blogs of late. It is not an encouraging experience to read them in any way. There is an aspect of reality shock in it all, but it is amazing to find out that most of them agree on the fundamental questions of how the crisis should be handled. One wonder why those in power cannot decide.

The violence in Iraq is very complex at the moment. Here is an Attempt at Categorization that is very clarifying.

R- External-agenda Forces

This group includes the American administration and the US army, coalition forces, forces with international anti-American agenda (such as Al-Qaeda), countries that wish the US campaign to fail and the US to be bogged in the Iraqi quagmire, Countries of the region serving their own interests

G- Iraqi-agenda Forces

Forces of National Resistance, Baathists, "nationalistic" religious forces and Sectarian forces. This group must also include the two main Kurdish parties and a wide assortment of Iraqi political parties.

B- Criminal gangs

Pure criminal gangs out for money and the power associated with it, taking advantage of the absence of Law and Order to loot, rob banks, kidnap and murder; Criminal gangs in the service of any of the above forces willing to pay for their services to bomb, kidnap, sabotage and create chaos.

This blog out of Baghdad tells of the absence of freedom in media:

Iraq saw demonstrations against and for the verdict. The pro-Saddam
demonstrators were attacked by the Iraqi army. This is how free our
media is today: the channels that were showing the pro-Saddam
demonstrations have been shut down. Iraqi security forces promptly
raided them.Welcome to the new Iraq.

But the most touching are the personal ones. This is the blog of an 18 year old female colleage student. She writes of her daily life, her first day at collage, about playing with her sisters child, and then stuff like this:

I left home late today since the neighborhood was surrounded. We were having breakfast when an explosion happened and broke several windows in the house, including the dining room, but none of us was hurt. A bullet broke one of the windows yesterday too. We'll need new glass for the windows and some new curtains too. You can never anticipate what's going to happen next.

Her sister also has a blog and has pictures of the same event.

You can find a very comprehensive list of blogs in Iraq here.

May God have mercy on us all.