http://www.beliefnet.com/story/136/story_13642_1.htmlThis entry is from Cliff Kindy, 53, an organic farmer and full-time member of Christian Peacemaker Corps from North Manchester, Ind. Kindy was in Baghdad during the war and returned there recently.
Here in Baghdad we are into the fifth day with almost no electricity from the power grid across the city. We have only about 12 hours of electricity from our own generator each day. There are rumors that attacks against the power lines have taken out the major supply stations. Perhaps nothing is in the news because the party line is that conditions across Iraq are improving. Diesel deliveries are one-fifth what they were two months ago. Shortages are driving prices up dramatically. News reports note a "rash" of attacks against the oil pipeline network. Iraqis see a society devastated by the war becoming even worse.
Early this week we visited a family in the north of the city. The night before, 2,000 U.S. soldiers with 50 tanks and humvees had closed off the community, cut water and electricity, and with a list of names, had broken into homes in the area. Soldiers broke down the door of one house at 2 a.m. to ask the mother and six children, "Where is your husband?'' "You took him away on false charges the last two times you broke into our home."
The day after the raid the children did not go to school because they had no sleep and without electricity had been unable to prepare for the scheduled exams.
At a human rights organization on Tuesday, Alan Slater and I met a group of six men. They represent 2,500 men here in Baghdad who refused to fight in Hussein's military. For that blatant resistance they had the tops of their ears cut off, tongues cut, brands placed on their foreheads, the right to own property taken away from them, women in their family violated publicly, and then were thrown into jails or taken to the borders as outcasts.
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Worth reading.
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