Letter to America

I asked an Iraqi I know to write a letter to Americans. I told him he should write whatever he wants. Specifically, I said, "if you could say anything you wanted to the American people, what would it be?" He wrote a letter and was very passionate when giving it to me. I could tell that he had agonized over this letter, what he wanted to say and how best to say it. He speaks English well but has a little difficulty writing it. I wanted to give you his words without any help from my, but I did edit slightly only to make a few confusing sentences a little more understandable. Because he wrote such a long letter, I broke it into two parts. Below is part one. My Iraqi friend is eager for feedback. I promised him that I would share any comments about his letter with him. So, feel free to address your comments to him. Unfortunately, for security reasons, I cannot tell you much about this fine man, but I can tell you that I admire him for what he does and his dedication to Iraq.

This is what he wrote:

To my brothers and sisters all over the world,

Hi, I am in individual Iraqi, I can only express my own ideas about what is going on in this whole situation and I am very sure that the majority of Iraqis have the same idea.

First, before Coalition Forces came to Iraq, we were under a tyrant regime. Saddam and his followers, no doubt most of them were from Arab Sunni, those people were from Iraq too but they tortured, abused and offended the Iraqi people a lot, like mass graves, genocide, and so on. I cannot talk to you about the details of all what they did against us because it is unbelievable to someone to understand that.

So, the whole Iraqi people was warmly waiting for someone (outside forces) can hook them out of this deep, deep darkness, it doesn't matter who ever they could be, no problem, just to get rid of this regime! Once we heard from the news that Coalition Forces want to take over Saddam, you cannot imagine how happy we were at that time! We've been listening to the radio very carefully all of the time, waiting eagerly for the day of Coalition's coming.

So, brother, the miraculous happened: Coalition started to enter Iraq. When they were at Om Alkasen, they faced little difficulties over there in engaging with the Iraqi Army (Saddam's Army). The majority of Iraqi people, even a lot from Arab Sunni, were very excited of Coalition's defeating that army and hoped they would take over Iraq a moment earlier than an hour.

Tell you what, is there any people in the whole world that wants his country to get occupied by some strange forces, or wants his army to get killed one by one by those forces, except Iraqi people? But we do! We just want to get rid of Saddam and his followers' occupation, apparently they are Muslim. We really did like Saddam's army to get destroyed by the Coalition no matter what they are or what their religion is! Then imagine how bad Saddam and his guys were.

However, America and her allies liberated Iraq from devils. When we saw on TV Saddam's statues getting down, we were very happy. And each of you saw how Coalition Forces was walking around without body armor and armored vehicles and a lot of people greeted them with roses. After that, some VIP's and some higher ranks of these forces announced that we did occupy Iraq and not liberate it! A lot of Iraqi people changed their minds about Coalition's existence in Iraq.

You know we are a Muslim society and the word "occupation" is easy for them, but it is very tough and really hard for our people. And so it seems that they did not have a program which is how to close the long distance of borders between Iraq and other countries. They (Coalition) just got control of the Ministry of Oil, all other government offices were stolen, destroyed or burned by those with weak spirits of Iraqi people. Even all myth and legends from antiquities were stolen so our progressive went back as it was twenty years ago.

The masses were everywhere! Also a lot of organizations got into Iraq and formed militias. Al Qeada got inside and whoever has a revenge up on the U.S. got inside of Iraq, but nothing happened quick to stop them. Besides all of that, a lot of Iraqi people started getting kidnapped, killed and abused by those militias. So, Arab Sunni and Baath party started sympathizing with Al Qeada and Shia with Al Sadr who formed an army call "Mahdi's Army". Those people are refusing occupation.

First of all, Al Qeada tried to gain Al Sadr to their side to become strong but absolutely they failed. Beside that, Al Sadr started fighting them and to clean Iraq of them, but Sunni or most of them were still sympathizing with Al Qeada even after how bad they are. No matter what they did, like cutting heads off, burning, kidnapping and raping people just for being Sunni, even worse that the Baath party (Saddam's men) who were really bad guys and worse than them. Nowadays, you may find them growing beards and wearing Islamic clothes and going to mosques, pretending to the people that they are real Islam and refusing to support this government and be against the occupation.

Everybody does refuse occupation, but I think there will be a time to leave Iraq after making sure that this government is strong enough to control the situation. So these Saddam's men (Baath) could not gain a lot of young men and support Al Qeada by their brainwashing of the young to go ahead and conduct suicide bombs and vehicle bomb attacks in order to make this government and the U.S. look bad in front of the public in general. That is because they lost that power which the used to have in Saddam's time.

So, brother, the suffering of the Iraqi people increased day by day. The Coalition formed a good government from free men by election but unfortunately, some of Saddam's men enabled to get into the government itself. We can say they work with the government at day and with the bad guys at night. And Shia divided into two parts: Al Sadr, who supports the government and refuse foreign forces existance; and other parts who support the government and say that "once the government is good to get everything under control, we do not need these forces anymore in our country, with all appreciation to them that they saved us", and Kurdish people support the government and want a separate country for themselves and have Kirkuk and the Coalition being with them just to make their desire happen.

So no one feels the responsibility of making a united Iraq except American Forces. Every member of government wants to fill his pockets with money even if it could be against somebody else, and do nothing to help these bleeding, poor people. Thy are like, "let people get killed, kidnapped and whatever, no one cares," and they are within the government itself.

That is the first half of my Iraqi friend's letter to America. I'll post the other half shortly.


Update: Part II here.

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