The Changing Language of War

Dhia, works in the restaurant downstairs, he came up to talk to me today as he doled out meals to people on the floor.

"Do you think it's safe for me to report in your neighborhood," I asked. His eyes widened and he shook his head.

"Every day is worse than the one before," he said of his southeast Baghdad home. He lives in a Christian enclave in the Shiite dominated area.

Two days ago an entire Sunni family was killed. The next day the Mahdi Army came back to kill a Shiite witness, he said. His family was spared, they live outside Iraq.

"Enaalso," he said in Iraqi slang. It's a new Iraqi word, a phrase used to explain being turned in by an informant to a militia and then being killed. Literally it means he was "chewed up."

It's what Iraqis now repeatedly say to explain the killings of families by militias that control their neighborhoods with fear and weapons; a word to explain the corpses that show up in the streets.

The Shiites in the neighborhood have grown disdainful towards the Mahdi Army, the militant wing of the Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr. They to are being killed for one errant word, he said. But no one will say anything.

He ran his finger across his neck, in a motion of a throat being slit. That's what happens, rah yaalsouch, they will chew you up.   

Comments

[billjpa]

brilliant and tragic! I applaud you for your efforts.
Stay safe-- PLEASE!

[lalo]

This story took my breath away like I'd been punched in the stomach.

You are such a powerful witness to this unfolding horror that my country has unleashed upon the Iraqi people. I pray for your safety, your sanity and your forgiveness.