Excellent article on Iraq war

[Darth Wong]

I don't normally do the Shep-style "quote an article" post, but I thought this article from today's Toronto Star GTA section was superb. By simply allowing expatriate Iraqis for and against the war in Iraq to tell their stories and speak their minds, it gives a balanced discussion on the subject from the perspective of Iraqis:

War splits Iraqi friends

Two Centennial Students rue life under Saddam
But they fiercely debate the merits of a U.S. invasion

Catherine Porter
Staff Reporter

Their friendship is based on 20 hours a week of classes together, the country they once shared, their sense of exiled existence in Canada and a painfully earned, smouldering hatred of Saddam Hussein.

But their one disagreement looms so large, it threatens to strike down all their similarities.

"If I have to choose war and see my family killed or let them live simple, bad lives under Saddam Hussein, I say let them live. Let Saddam stay," says Alaa Salman, sitting in a Centennial College office in Scarborough, where both he and Chro Zand Mohammad study advanced English.

"Saddam Hussein is already killing my people. They are living death. For me, every day is war," Mohammad jumps in, shattering the collegial chatter and respectful quiet that has shrouded a three-hour interview. "There is no freedom with Saddam Hussein."

Mohammad is a Kurd from northern Iraq - the area she calls Kurdistan that has been under American and British protection since 1991. Salman is a Sunni Muslim from Baghdad. Today, both are Canadians, working diligently to build new lives while worrying about the old ones they left behind.

"People don't know what war means, what it means to lose your family, to have everything destroyed and for children to grow up angry and seeking vengeance," says Salman, 35. "This is not a game."

Mohammad first heard the scream of bombs three days after her wedding. She and her husband, Saad, had just moved into a home close to the hospital where he worked, an hour outside of Halabja. Windows shattered, doors blew from hinges, the tree out front was carved in half. "I remember an 11-year-old child. His parents brought him to the hospital. You could hard recognize if he was a boy or girl," says Mohammad, 37. It wasn't until the next day, when victims from Halabja arrived, that she heard about the strange yellow gas that killed thousands there.

Salman first heard the "devil-noise" of bombs at 2:40 a.m. on Jan. 17, 1991 - the start of the Gulf War. With his five sisters and four brothers, he huddled in a concrete bunker in fear of a chemical attack. Within a week, they were without electricity, water, and food. Buildings around them were flattened. "We slept together during the day and at night, we listened to the music of war," he says.

Once the Iraqi troops retreated from Kuwait, Mohammad took part in the celebrations that erupted in the north, as Kurdish fighters known as peshmergas claimed the area. A month later, she heard the rumours of Iraqi tanks coming.

Three months pregnant and carrying her 1-year-old son Las, she joined the millions that fled for the Iranian border. "We didn't feel it was night. We didn't feel hungry or thirsty. We just walked," she says.

But after a month in an Iranian refugee camp, she returned to her home to search for her husband, who was studying in Baghdad when the war broke out. "My house was burned. I didn't have any pictures - they burnt them all. All my books, all the stories I wrote, every valuable thing I had, they took it from me," she says.

Life hadn't improved for Salman either. "Everyone was happy at the end of the war. We expected the Americans to topple Saddam and bring in a new government, a new future, a new life. But the truth was terrible," he says.

Without connections to Saddam's Baath party, his monthly salary as a civil engineer couldn't buy 30 eggs. His father had died; he needed to provide for his family. So, he got a job hawking milk on street corners. In 1997, he heard the Libyan embassy was hiring engineers to teach in Tripoli. He decided to go.

Mohammad also left that year. In Baghdad while her husband finished his medical doctorate, she heard of Kurdish families being trucked out by the military to the north of the country.

"Instead of allowing the military to push me out and abuse and harass me, I said 'I'll go myself,'" she says. Two months later, she was in Ankara, applying for refugee status.

Mohammad has been in Canada for five years. Salman arrived in 2001. He works part-time as an optical technician and hopes to be an engineer. She plans to study journalism. At the Scarborough campus, surrounded by people half their age, they have each other to talk to - about home, about missing family. But not about the future of the land they once called home.

"We disagree, but we're friends," she says. "I just want democracy, like Canada. Peace and freedom."

[Crown]

"We disagree, but we're friends," she says. "I just want democracy, like Canada. Peace and freedom."

I hope that they get what they want.

[Enforcer Talen]

good points on all sides. I think their concerns are reflected in the majority of debates ive seen lately. freedom for less vs opressed life for all. tough argument.

[Wicked Pilot]

I guess that's the big question, is the cure better or worse than the desease?

[Gandalf]

I guess that's the big question, is the cure better or worse than the desease?

As grim as it sounds, we pretty much have to go in, the casualties will be bad, but in the long run it will be better.