| From Chicago airport as I was running between gates to connect, I talked on my cell to Ali Hili, a gay Iraqi now living in London. I had contacted him two weeks ago upon reading that several safe houses for gay and lesbian Iraqis were due to close because of lack of funding. Ali is helping to arrange for me and the United Way representative to meet with gay and lesbian Iraqis. Ali has a fatwa (religiously decreed death order) issued against him and London police help guard his home.
He mentioned that some of his friends in Iraq didn't speak English, and I responded that I would have a translator with me. In a dead serious tone, he then warned that I needed to make sure that the translator was someone we could trust. If it was someone who personally disapproved of homosexuality, as most of the Iraqi population does, then the lives of the people I meet with could be in jeopardy because the translator might reveal their identities as homosexuals to those who would torment or kill them. In a voice cracking with deep feeling, he then said he has lost many friends already and didn't want to lose anymore. I told him that I understood the stakes. I will make sure to thoroughly vet any translator I use, which probably also means that I will come out to them personally and gauge their reaction (something that our American servicemen and women cannot do).
Such is the state of Iraq. Gay and lesbian Iraqis are under the same constant threat of assassination as many others who suffer from the ongoing disorder arising from our unjustified invasion including secular professionals, educated women, and those who collaborate too closely with the occupying force. Iraq is a place of life and death stakes
The driver on the way from the Amman airport to the hotel where I am now was mostly complaining about the Iraqi refugees. Today is also election day in Jordan, and there are signs for candidates posted all over, but our driver said he doesn't bother to vote because the parliament doesn't have any real power. He said that there are about 1,000,000 Iraqi refugees in Amman and that they have a negative impact in many ways. They are now in school with the Jordanian children, he continued, but Iraqis are mostly rich and have a sense of entitlement that separates them, and they are not generally liked by the Jordanians. Because of the influx, real estate prices have increased by about fifty percent over the last few years, which makes some Jordanians happy and frustrates others. I love listening to drivers in any city; the story you get isn't always accurate but in many ways in is more accurate than the objective truth because it is an accurate window into what the public perception is.
Over the next few days, I look forward to getting a first-hand perspective on what is going on in Iraq. I generally have more confidence in the abilities of NGOs (non-governmental organizations, or a fancy word for non-profits) than the government to deliver services and have an impact. At the federal level that means I will advocate for directing more of our economic development aid through NGOs rather than through nations that sometimes use it to further their own machines of oppression. There are few international NGOs still operating in Iraq (I will meet with at least two). In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, many set up shop but the intense civil war has driven away all but a handful.
Here was my reading list for this trip, let me know if there are any other books you recommend upon my return:
The Occupation of Iraq
By Ali Allawi
Fiasco
By Thomas E Ricks
A History of Iraq
By Charles Tripp
On the flight I completed Fiasco, and the main reaction I have is a further sense of astonishment at the sheer incompetence of the current administration as well as the Democrats who stood by and said nothing. My parents protested the Vietnam War and I grew up in the legacy of family activism, and it pains me to believe that we have repeated the mistakes of so recent a generation
Not only did our administration lie to the American people in the lead up to this war, but they executed the occupation in a way that continues to threaten the very Iraqis we had hoped would build a new Iraq.
Now I am off to sleep, my next post will be from Baghdad.
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