The day Ahmed Alwishah landed in Iraq was the day the U.S. Army
captured Saddam Hussein.
Alwishah, a graduate student in the UCLA Near Eastern languages
and cultures department, had went to Iraq on Dec. 13, 2003 to visit
family he hadn’t seen for over 10 years. He remembered he
caught the Iraqis in a “very good mood.”
“It was a day of jubilation in the south,” he said,
referring to the area of Iraq which has generally been less
resistant to the U.S. occupation.
Though the war in Iraq, now a year old, may have fallen off the
radar for much of UCLA, for others such as Alwishah the situation
is still very much alive. For some, having family members living in
Iraq keep them in touch with the region. For others, concern arises
from having friends or loved ones serving in the military in a
still volatile and dangerous area.
Nancy Allen, a third-year molecular cell developmental biology
student, said she would talk with a high school friend serving in
Iraq once every couple of weeks over AOL Instant Messenger.
Her friend, who worked as an Arabic translator in the 101st
Airborne Division, usually didn’t talk politics over the
Internet, Allen said. Instead, he talked about social activities,
like celebrating his 21st birthday in Iraq or the things soldiers
did when they were off-duty.
Allen’s friend was billeted in one of Hussein’s
numerous palaces in Mosul, the northern region of Iraq.
“His Internet connection wasn’t too good,” she
said with a laugh.
Though Allen’s friend is currently back at his home base
in Kentucky, Allen said he expects to be sent back overseas soon.
She worries for him sometimes, as anyone else would for a friend in
a dangerous region, she said.
Alwishah had an opportunity to survey Iraq first-hand when he
visited for 26 days over winter break. A refugee from the first
Persian Gulf War, Alwishah hadn’t seen his mother and
brother, who live in Nasiriyah, since he fled the country in
1992.
Alwishah, who spent time in Baghdad and southern Iraq, described
a “vacuum of security and order” in Baghdad, where
Iraqis are generally afraid to travel alone at night because of
robbers and are frustrated with the lack of basic civil
services.
Alwishah said communication is the main problem in modern-day
Iraq. Because soldiers and civilians have a tough time talking to
each other, neither side really understands what needs to be done,
and both successes and failures go unreported.
While he was in Iraq, Alwishah talked with Iraqi civilians,
students, professors and American soldiers. At one point, he said
he helped American soldiers clear up a traffic jam.
There has been noticeable progress since Hussein was removed
from power. Some people now buy more expensive goods from markets,
and the newfound freedom of expression has led to the creation of
over 100 newspapers, Alwishah said.
But both Alwishah and his roommate Hasan Hussain, another Near
Eastern studies graduate student who has family in Iraq, agree on
the biggest concern for Iraqis in a post-war environment:
security.
“In one sense, you’re glad Saddam is out of power
… But you had public security (under Saddam.) You didn’t
have bombs blowing up all over the place. Why do you have bombs
blowing up all over the place?” Hussain asked.
Hussain nearly lost family in the recent bombing in Karbala,
which killed over 150 Iraqis and wounded hundreds of others.
Hussain said his uncles and cousins had just left the area before
synchronized suicide bombings tore through crowds of Shiite
pilgrims. Hussain’s relatives helped remove the bodies
afterwards.
Iraqis also generally have no confidence in the U.S.-appointed
Iraqi governing council, Alwishah said, because “they
aren’t seen as having power. They aren’t the
decision-makers.”
Yet both Alwishah and Hussain have expressed confidence in the
resiliency of the Iraqi people, and Alwishah summed up what he sees
as the situation in Iraq a year after the opening shots of the war
were fired:
“There is fear and there is hope.”