From that incident and until today things have been moving in a downward spiral. The “coalition forces” don’t feel safe and we don’t feel safe either. You can see the distrust in their eyes and the way they hold these big guns towards you when you move close to a check point. And if you ever drive beside a convoy don’t look out your window they would be having their guns pointed at you, aimed right between your eyes. Some areas are better than others, you still see soldiers in certain districts very relaxed walking around and talking to people. Kids on their tanks or buying roasted chicken from a restaurant. They are on their edgier side when moving or on checkpoints. I don’t blame them; I hate to be in the situation they are in. I was hoping that the day when they would be moving in Baghdad in civilian clothes and browsing thru our markets, mixing with people was closer than it looks now.
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Now when you go ask the people in the village, district or neighborhood about the attacks they tell you the attackers were strangers, not from the area. Think of it for a moment. If I wanted to instigate anti-american sentiments in a neighborhood which was until now indifferent towards the Americans what would be the best thing to do?
I would find a way to get the Americans to do bad things in that neighborhood, for example shoot indiscriminately at houses and shops make them go on house to house searches, tie up the men and put sacks on their heads and scare all the children. this would tilt your American-o-meter from the “I-don’t-really-care” position to the “what-the- fuck-do-they-think-they-are-doing?” position.
Take a look at the attacks the last week and their aftermath. This sort of thing repeats itself and kind of snowballs from grumbles to calls for Jihad, just like what happened in the Adhamiya district near the abu-Hanifa mosque after the confrontation between Iraqis and American soldiers ended with two dead Iraqis. what else?
There are rumors that a couple of high-tension electricity towers in the north have been sabotaged. Electricity has gotten worse, we get 5 hours of electricity a day in my neighborhood; it was so much better one week ago. People start grumbling again about the promises the Americans made and have not fulfilled. more? Two tank mines exploded on the streets of Baghdad, this is the third one. They are putting them in black garbage bags, the first exploded under a truck which was part of an Army convoy. One soldier got hurt.
The other two both exploded yesterday. The first in an underpass right in the middle of baghdad’s Tahrir square. It exploded under a taxi, no one was killed but two people got injured. The second exploded in Ghazalia district killing a girl and injuring her mother. Now this second mine was laid on the street after the American check point left that same street and the people there are saying that the mine was left by the Americans, which is complete bullshit.
What I want to say is that these attacks might be sporadic and unorganized; but they do what the Ba’athists want to do, creating a very tough situation for the American administration to do anything good or to keep their promises, changing people's sentiments. adding more heat to a summer which is too hot already.
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